Designer of jewelry for royalty and celebrities

Andrew Grima, 86, whose jewelry adorned royalty and celebrities, died Dec. 26 at a hospital in the Swiss mountain resort of Gstaad after contracting pneumonia after a fall this month, his family said.

Born to a Maltese father and an Italian mother in Rome in 1921, Grima came to prominence in London in the 1960s with a flowery, organic style using rough stones in large pieces that captured the mood of a new generation of postwar fashion designers.

One of those who took an interest early on in Grima’s work was Lord Snowdon, then married to Britain’s Princess Margaret. The Snowdon connection as well as numerous prizes Grima received for his work during the 1960s earned him a coveted royal warrant as a supplier of jewelry to the British royal family.

Among the pieces he made was a ruby, diamond and gold brooch given to Queen Elizabeth II by her husband, Prince Philip, and worn during her televised Christmas Day speech, a day before Grima’s death.

Grima, who never formally trained as a jeweler, joined H.J. Co., owned by his first wife’s father, after World War II, during which he had spent five years in Burma and India with the Royal Engineers.

He first worked as an administrator, but one day persuaded his then father-in-law to buy a suitcase full of semiprecious stones from a pair of Brazilian dealers so that he could try his hand at designing a new kind of jewelry.