{"id":102162,"date":"2019-06-27T19:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revolution.watch\/?p=102162"},"modified":"2024-04-17T07:10:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T23:10:00","slug":"fantasy-hours-andrew-grimas-about-time-for-omega","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revolutionwatch.com\/fantasy-hours-andrew-grimas-about-time-for-omega\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy Hours: Andrew Grima\u2019s About Time for Omega"},"content":{"rendered":"
In 1969, Omega commissioned London-based artist jeweler Andrew Grima to design a collection of watches, About Time, that\u00a0even today remain unsurpassed for their ingenuity, audacity\u00a0and powerful, sculptural design. Though Mr Grima was already acknowledged as a maverick of modern jewelry design, and\u00a0was arguably the most innovative designer of his generation with\u00a0a wildly\u00a0fashionable shop at No. 80 Jermyn Street and a Royal\u00a0Warrant, he\u00a0had never previously designed a watch. As the jeweler to\u00a0The Queen,\u00a0Princess Margaret and Jackie O said: \u201cIf\u00a0you\u00a0need to\u00a0know the\u00a0time, you ask your chauffeur.\u201d
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\u201cThe way Andrew worked was to incessantly sketch an endless flow\u00a0of\u00a0ideas on the back of envelopes, scraps of paper, hotel stationery\u00a0or\u00a0bar mats,\u201d says Jojo Grima as she opens folders from her\u00a0late\u00a0husband\u2019s archive showing the great man\u2019s rough sketches for\u00a0About Time. <\/p>\n
Jojo also owns all of the beautifully described illustrations\u00a0of the collection of 55 watches and 31 pieces of jewelry,\u00a0as\u00a0well as some of the wooden models Grima took to Omega\u00a0in\u00a01969. As he told journalist Shirley Conran in 1970: \u201cThe first\u00a0time I went to Switzerland with the experimental wooden models,\u00a0I\u00a0was greeted with dead silence, then a series of polite questions.\u00a0The Swiss are not inclined to go mad.
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The uniting factor in each of the unique watch designs was the concept of seeing time through gemstones. Each stone dictated the\u00a0design of the watch and, as Anna Motson wrote in her essay \u2018Watches\u00a0as\u00a0Jewels\u2019 that appeared in The Saturday Book in 1971, \u201cThe\u00a0stone\u00a0cutters\u00a0were called on\u00a0to cut precious and semi-precious\u00a0stones in shapes and sizes that\u00a0had\u00a0never before been attempted, and the whole\u00a0project faced Grima\u2019s own craftsmen with\u00a0the highest test of their skill ever\u00a0encountered.\u201d
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\u201cMy father was adamant that the Omega logo did not appear on his watch\u00a0faces and he also refused to entertain numerals,\u201d says Andrew\u00a0and\u00a0Jojo Grima\u2019s daughter Francesca, who today designs under\u00a0her own marque as well as with her mother on contemporary Grima\u00a0pieces. Grima allowed his imagination to run wild designing\u00a0watches as rings, pendants, pocket watches and clips. Even\u00a0the\u00a0pieces worn conventionally as a bracelet were anything but.\u00a0Tornado sets a rutilated quartz almond-shaped glass in a \u201cspringy\u00a0bangle\u201d of polished yellow-gold wire spattered with diamond\u00a0strips. Carr\u00e9 is pure Grima: an aquamarine crystal face set on\u00a0a bracelet of square, textured gold and\u00a0diamond set\u00a0platinum\u00a0blocks\u00a0not\u00a0dissimilar to crazy paving.
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The unsurpassed About Time series was created when Andrew Grima, one of the greatest jewelry designers of all time, designed 55 watches for Omega.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":154,"featured_media":102163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[109,88],"tags":[873,11],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n