Lately, Andrew Grima has become a buzzy name amongst the design-led watch cognoscenti. Even those who are only narrowly interested in luxury replica watches uk from the ’70s will have likely heard the name. His contribution as an artist to the watchmaking metier was, well, atypical, to put it mildly.
The late London-based artist and jeweler, whose clients included the British Royal Family and Jackie Kennedy, among others, is most well known among watch enthusiasts for creating a series of watches for perfect fake Omega in 1969. The aptly named About Time collection was composed of wildly bold designs in a space of largely conservative-looking 1:1 replica Omega Seamasters and De Villes. Grima created sculptural pieces with hard graphic lines but also amorphous organic forms – his juxtaposition of the flou and the structure was something more akin to high jewelry or art; it was, up until then, a sight unseen in watch design.
A few weeks ago in London, while visiting a Grima retrospective at Tomasso Gallery, I learned that Grima’s appreciation of watch design may have started with an entirely different brand. In a picture taken in 1969 (which was later signed and given to his daughter Francesca), we see him wearing what appears to be a Boucheron Reflet, which I was told he wore every day until he designed his own super clone Omega for sale UK.
Boucheron’s Reflet was introduced in 1947 and made for decades in yellow gold, rose gold, and white gold with varying finishes like Clous de Paris, vertical brushing, and vertical ribbing (read all about vintage Boucheron here). Typically, the dial finish matches the case. From what we can gather, Grima’s Reflet is either vertically brushed or ribbed and features either Roman numerals or applied hour markers.
As a part of the About Time collection, Grima designed a watch for his own wrist. His personal aaa quality replica Omega Teak watch, “unlike the production model, was the only watch from the collection with both his name and the Omega logo on the dial,” explained Francesca. “He wore it every single day from 1969.”
It features a sliding six o’clock lug similar to the sliding mechanism of his Boucheron, a clear influence. Additionally, you can see the Boucheron influences in the About Time collection, such as Grima’s use of brushed dials and the distinctively Boucheron-looking shape of the hands. When I later looked through old Boucheron catalogs, I noticed that similar influences were no doubt at play in reverse. Grima’s jewel-heavy Swiss movement fake Omega creations most likely served as inspiration for the Parisian high-jewelry brand in much of their jewelry-watch catalog into the 1970s and ’80s.