Garrard and Asprey represent two of the most distinguished names in the history of British fine jewellery and luxury goods — houses whose combined histories span more than five centuries of craftsmanship, royal patronage, and cultural influence. Though they operated for most of their existence as entirely separate enterprises, the two were briefly united under common ownership between 1995 and 2007, a period that proved commercially turbulent and ultimately led each to pursue its own independent course. To understand the significance of their pairing — and their parting — it is necessary to trace the separate arcs of each house before examining what their union meant for the British luxury trade.

Garrard: The Crown Jeweller

The house of Garrard traces its origins to 1735, when George Wickes established a silversmithing and jewellery workshop in Panton Street, London. Wickes was a craftsman of considerable technical accomplishment, and his workshop attracted aristocratic clients almost from the outset. The business passed through several partnerships — Wickes and Netherton, then Wakelin and Tayler — before Edward Barnard and John Garrard entered the firm in the early nineteenth century. It was under the Garrard family name that the house achieved its most enduring distinction.

In 1843, Queen Victoria appointed Garrard as Crown Jeweller, a designation that placed the firm in formal charge of the maintenance, alteration, and occasional augmentation of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom — the regalia housed in the Tower of London. This appointment, renewed by successive sovereigns, made Garrard unique among British jewellers: no other house has held the title of Crown Jeweller continuously over so long a period. The responsibilities attached to the role were substantial and occasionally historic. It was Garrard that re-cut the Koh-i-Noor diamond in 1852 under the direction of Prince Albert, reducing the stone from its original Indian form to the brilliant-cut oval that sits today in the front cross of the Queen Mother's Crown. The re-cutting was carried out by the Dutch lapidary Voorzanger using steam-powered machinery — a controversial intervention that reduced the stone's weight from approximately 186 old carats to 108.93 carats but was considered necessary to improve its brilliance under the gaslit conditions of Victorian display.

Throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods, Garrard produced jewellery of exceptional technical quality, working in the idioms of the day — naturalistic floral brooches set with diamonds and coloured stones, parures of graduated gems, and the grand ceremonial pieces demanded by an imperial court. The firm supplied tiaras, necklaces, and insignia to royal families across Europe, and its ledgers record commissions from clients as varied as the Maharajas of the Indian subcontinent and the landed aristocracy of Britain and Ireland.

In the twentieth century, Garrard continued to occupy its premises at 112 Regent Street, a location that had become synonymous with the highest tier of British jewellery retail. The house produced the engagement ring chosen by Prince Charles for Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 — a sapphire and diamond cluster ring set with an oval Ceylon sapphire of approximately 12 carats surrounded by fourteen solitaire diamonds in white gold, a piece that became one of the most recognisable jewels of the late twentieth century and which subsequently passed to Catherine, Princess of Wales.

Asprey: The Complete Luxury House

The Asprey story begins in a different register — not with precious stones and royal regalia, but with fine leather and the luxury goods trade. William Asprey established the firm in 1781 in Mitcham, Surrey, initially producing fine printed fabrics and leather goods. The business relocated to London and, over the course of the nineteenth century, evolved into one of the capital's premier purveyors of luxury objects: dressing cases, silver, clocks, writing instruments, and eventually jewellery of the finest quality.

Asprey settled at 165–169 New Bond Street — the address that would define the house for nearly two centuries. The New Bond Street premises, with their distinctive dark green shopfront and bow windows, became an institution of London luxury, a destination for travellers, diplomats, and the aristocracy seeking objects that combined superb materials with impeccable English craftsmanship. Asprey received its first Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria and subsequently held warrants from multiple members of the royal family simultaneously, a distinction shared by very few luxury houses.

Unlike Garrard, which was primarily a jeweller and silversmith, Asprey cultivated a broader identity as a maison de luxe in the Continental sense — a house where one might commission a bespoke jewel, purchase a silver-mounted crocodile dressing case, acquire a fine clock, or order a set of leather-bound books. This breadth was both a strength and a complication: it gave Asprey a distinctive character but also made it harder to position in an era when luxury brands were increasingly defined by a single dominant category.

The jewellery produced by Asprey was consistently of the highest quality, drawing on the skills of London's Hatton Garden workshops as well as in-house craftsmen. The house was particularly noted for its coloured gemstone jewellery — pieces that reflected a deep familiarity with fine rubies, sapphires, and emeralds — and for its silver and gold objects of vertu. Asprey's client list over two centuries included royalty, heads of state, and figures from the worlds of literature and the arts.

The Merger and Its Consequences

In 1995, the Asprey family sold the business to a consortium that subsequently acquired Garrard as well, uniting the two houses under a single corporate structure. The rationale was commercially logical on its face: two prestigious British luxury brands, each with royal warrants and centuries of heritage, might together command the kind of global recognition that would allow them to compete with the great Continental houses — Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Bulgari — on the international stage.

The combined entity, operating as Asprey and Garrard, opened a flagship on New Bond Street and pursued an ambitious programme of international expansion, opening boutiques in New York, Hong Kong, and other major luxury markets. The house engaged prominent designers — most notably Jade Jagger, whose appointment as creative director in 1999 attracted considerable press attention — in an effort to reposition the merged brand for a younger, more fashion-conscious clientele without alienating its traditional customer base.

The results were mixed. Critics and clients alike found the merger uncomfortable: Garrard's identity as Crown Jeweller and its associations with formal, traditional British jewellery sat uneasily alongside Asprey's broader luxury goods offering, and neither brand was entirely well served by the attempt to forge a unified aesthetic. The international expansion proved costly, and the business struggled financially through the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2000, the investment group Richemont — owner of Cartier, IWC, and other luxury brands — acquired a significant stake in the combined business, but the association did not produce the hoped-for transformation. Further ownership changes followed, with the Aga Khan and other investors involved at various points in a complex corporate history that reflected the broader turbulence of the luxury goods market in that period.

Separation and the Modern Era

By 2007, the merger was effectively unwound. Asprey and Garrard were separated into independent entities, each free to pursue its own identity and strategy. The demerger was widely regarded in the trade as an acknowledgement that the two houses were more valuable apart than together — that their respective heritages were too distinct, and their client relationships too specific, to be successfully homogenised.

Garrard, following the separation, relocated from its long-standing Regent Street premises to Albemarle Street in Mayfair, repositioning itself as a contemporary fine jewellery house while retaining its historical identity and its associations with the Crown Jewels. The house continued to hold the title of Crown Jeweller until 2007, when the Royal Warrant Holders Association confirmed that the appointment would not be renewed — a significant moment in the firm's history, ending a relationship with the Crown that had endured for more than 160 years. Garrard has since operated as an independent jewellery house, producing collections that draw on its archival heritage while engaging with contemporary design.

Asprey, for its part, returned to New Bond Street and to its identity as a complete luxury house. Under the ownership of John Rigas and subsequently other investors, the house has worked to restore the breadth and quality of its offering — jewellery, silver, leather goods, and bespoke objects — that defined it at its Victorian and Edwardian peak. The New Bond Street flagship remains one of London's most distinguished retail addresses.

Legacy and Significance

The histories of Garrard and Asprey illuminate several important truths about the nature of heritage luxury brands and the challenges they face in the modern market. Both houses accumulated their reputations over centuries through consistent quality, royal patronage, and deep relationships with a clientele that valued discretion and craftsmanship above novelty. Both were, at their respective peaks, genuinely irreplaceable: there was no other Crown Jeweller, no other house quite like Asprey on Bond Street.

The merger of 1995 was, in retrospect, an attempt to apply a Continental luxury-conglomerate model — the logic of LVMH or Richemont — to two houses whose value was inseparable from their individual identities. The lesson drawn by most observers in the trade is that heritage, in fine jewellery, is not fungible: the accumulated associations of a name, a warrant, an address, and a clientele cannot simply be combined with those of another house and expected to produce a sum greater than its parts.

From a gemmological and craft perspective, both houses contributed significantly to the history of British jewellery. Garrard's involvement with the Crown Jewels — the re-cutting of the Koh-i-Noor, the setting of the Cullinan diamonds in the Imperial State Crown and other pieces of regalia, the maintenance of the Black Prince's Ruby (actually a spinel) and the Stuart Sapphire — places it at the centre of some of the most historically significant gemstone narratives in the English-speaking world. Asprey's contribution is perhaps less dramatic but no less real: a consistent standard of quality in coloured gemstone jewellery and luxury objects that influenced the taste of generations of British and international clients.

Both houses continue to operate, and both retain the capacity to produce jewellery of the highest order. Their story — of independent excellence, ill-fated union, and eventual separation — serves as one of the more instructive case studies in the modern history of fine jewellery as a business as well as an art.

Further Reading

• Gems & Gemology — GIA Publications Archive
• American Gem Trade Association (AGTA)