Hancocks and Grima set 8.19 carats of French cuts
The five-piece Grima for Hancocks series debuted at the St James's Street townhouse after three years' work. All prices are on request, and the largest stone is an 11.15-carat cognac old-cut oval.
By The Diamonds Desk
What changed
Two London houses combined. Hancocks and Grima have shown a five-piece series built on French-cut diamonds at Hancocks' St James's Street townhouse. Each piece carries both houses' makers' marks.
What it means
- If you buy antique cuts: The series puts 8.19 carats of French cuts into one pair of earrings and 2.14 carats around one ring.
- If you price estate goods: No price is published for any of the five pieces. The house gives them on request only.
- What this is not: A production collection or a priced release. Five pieces were made with one craftsman, by hand, and no edition size, retail figure or wholesale figure has been given.
Key figures
| Convertible earrings, total weightFrench cuts, platinum | 8.19 ct |
|---|---|
| Cognac old-cut oval ringheld by removable components | 11.15 ct |
| Antique pear ringplus 2.14 ct of French cuts | 5.07 ct |
| Pieces in the seriesthree years in the making | 5 |
Source: JCK's report of the Grima for Hancocks debut at Hancocks London, published 25 September 2026
French cuts carry the series
One cut repeats. French cuts appear in the earrings, the pear ring and the dress set, and removable French-cut components hold the cognac oval in place.
A building inspired it. The 8.19-carat earrings take their fracture of light from an Oscar Niemeyer building in Paris, as the report describes it.
| Piece | Metal | Stones named | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convertible day-to-night earrings | Platinum | 8.19 ct t.w. French-cut diamonds | On request |
| Antique pear ring | 18k brushed yellow gold | 5.07 ct antique pear, 2.14 ct French cuts | On request |
| Cognac oval ring | Not published | 11.15 ct cognac old-cut oval | On request |
| Dress set: double clips, cufflinks, three studs | Brushed yellow gold | French-cut diamonds, weight not published | On request |
| Earrings | Not published | Asscher-cut diamonds, Colombian emeralds, bullet-cut diamonds | On request |
Notes on this table
Every price cell reads on request that is the report's own wording and it is printed rather than estimated. No figure is put on an unpriced piece here, so no per-carat rate, no retail estimate and no comparable is offered here.
What is published four carat weights, the metals where the report names them, and the cuts. Two of the five pieces have no metal stated and one has no stone weight stated, and those cells say so.
The count the series is described as five pieces; the dress set is counted as one piece and contains double clips, cufflinks and three studs.
Who sourced the stones. Guy Burton, managing director of Hancocks, is named as sourcing the gemstones personally.
No quotation is used in this article; the designers' statements are paraphrased with their names attached.
The work ran three years
It began in gouache. Grima showed Burton a set of gouache paintings three years ago and the five pieces followed.
One bench made them. The pieces were worked by a single craftsman whose father had worked with Andrew Grima.
Nothing carries a published price
Prices on request. The report gives no figure for any piece, and no edition size or production run is stated.
Carats are the measure. The only published numbers are carat weights, and they are the four given above.
What to watch
- UndatedA price for any of the five pieces, none of which has been published.
- OngoingThe series on view at Hancocks London, 62 St James's Street.
- UndatedWhether either house states an edition size or repeats the collaboration.
Go deeper
What would change this call
A price. Five unpriced pieces cannot be set against any market, so nothing here supports a claim about what antique cuts are worth. A published figure for any one of them, or a resale at auction, would make the series measurable. An edition size would also change the reading, because five pieces made once and five pieces made repeatedly are different propositions for a buyer.
What a French cut is, and why weight is the only number here
A French cut is a square or rectangular step cut with a cross of facets rising to a point, worked in Europe from roughly the sixteenth century and common in Art Deco setting, where it was used in lines and borders rather than as a centre stone. It is a shallow cut that returns light in flat planes instead of the scintillation a modern brilliant is designed for, which is why it reads as a band of light rather than as a sparkle and why a designer describing a metal ceiling that fractures light is describing a real optical property rather than a metaphor. It is also why weight is the only number this story can carry. Antique and revived cuts have no equivalent of the RapNet grid: there is no published per-carat list for a French cut of a given size and quality, because the supply is recut goods and old stock rather than a graded production stream. A house that sells them prices each piece against its own sourcing and its own book, which is what on request means.
Method
JCK's report was fetched directly at https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/hancocks-grima/, 200, 111,564 bytes, and read as plain body text. Its byline is Annie Davidson Watson and its date, printed in the body, is 25 September 2026. Every figure in this article is taken from that body: 8.19 cts. t.w. of French-cut diamonds in the convertible earrings, a 5.07 ct. antique pear-shape diamond ring with 2.14 cts. of surrounding French cuts, an 11.15 ct. cognac old-cut oval, five pieces, and three years from first drawings. The phrase all prices available on request is the report's own. No price, per-carat figure or valuation is printed here because none is published, and none was estimated. The Niemeyer and Trellick Tower references are the designers' stated inspirations as the report gives them and are attributed as description rather than as fact about the stones. The archive was checked by opening hits rather than counting them: searches of the site for Hancocks, for Grima and for French cut and French-cut each return nothing at all, across both built pages and the content files, so there is no prior coverage to advance or repeat and the period test does not arise. No direct quotation is used in this article; the two statements in the source, from Amy Burton and Guy Burton, are paraphrased with their names attached, and the quote count for this piece is zero.