Asprey has been making luxury objects for people with good taste since 1781, when William Asprey established the firm in Mitcham, Surrey. The company moved into London and built its reputation on objects meant to travel well and last: dressing cases, silver, leather goods, jewellery, clocks and watches. In 1862, Queen Victoria granted Asprey its first Royal Warrant, specifically for dressing cases, traveling bags and writing cases. That same year, Asprey won a gold medal for its dressing cases at the International Exhibition in London. The royal connection was not a slogan. Asprey held a warrant under every British monarch through Queen Elizabeth II.
The Sunflower belongs to a much later chapter in that history, and it has a very specific provenance of design. In 1991, Asprey began working in New York with the American jeweler Robert Bruce Bielka, a former Cartier New York jeweler who had established his own design and manufacturing firm in 1979. Christie’s identifies Bielka as the designer who created the basis for Asprey’s Sunflower collection, adapting the idea from his own successful sunflower jewels.
We adore the sheer beauty of this piece. The 30mm and 36 grams of 18-karat yellow gold formed as a sunflower, its petals chased and textured, its center built from rows of tiny gold granules, and its gold dial finished with a precise crosshatched pattern. Behind the theatrics is a Swiss quartz movement, a reminder that this is jewellery first and conventional horology second.
The sunflower has had a remarkable career: in Ovid, it was Clytie, condemned to turn toward Apollo; in the nineteenth century, it became an emblem of the Aesthetic movement; in Van Gogh's hands, it became one of the great subjects of modern painting. By the 1990s, an Asprey jewel. A journey, like time, that follows the sun.
