Grima

The first of these series of brooches was created by Grima in 1947 with his work becoming increasing naturalistic in style featuring stylized flowers in textured or unfinished gold to revealing the minutia of natural details. This development was facilitated by H.J company who developed a specialised technique based on the ‘lost wax’ method called centrifugal and vacuum casting. Grima modified this process using found natural materials, such as the oleander leaf offered in this lot, and would encase them in plaster of Paris. The found material would then be incinerated leaving a negative space in which to inject gold. After being cleaned by acid, a matte finish was achieved using a sand blaster and set with, most usually, a single diamond, as is the case here. The most famous example of this technique was made for H.R.H The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, in 1967. The brooch took the form of a piece of cast lichen that the Princess had picked up during a walk in Scotland. Andrew Grima wanted to create work which appeared to have been born in nature and this design process has become a hallmark of his designs.