Dust Jewellery grew out of a chance meeting of two strangers on a plane from Vancouver to Montreal in 1974, on the same Trade mission to Canada. They got on well and discovered that they were both ready for a new and stimulating challenge in life. They were an ideal partnership in the making. Norman Grant’s outstanding design credentials were well known: John Flegg was acknowledged in British jewellery circles as an astute and talented marketing man with a proven record of building successful businesses.

 

This meeting was the seed from which grew one of the foremost innovative jewellery 
companies in Europe and one which originated a major change in jewellery development in Scotland. The business was founded in 1976, based in the Mill Wynd workshop. John, Norman, the two masterly smiths, Don Beaton and Robin Mackie, and James Brent-Ward were the vital hub. John claims that the powerful effectiveness of this team remains one of the key success stories of jewellery in Scotland to this day.

 

The thirty staff were mostly trained in-house, most having come to their jobs straight from school. As talents developed, some became Heads of their area of expertise, for example Sandy Gallo in casting, Jackie Cassels and Karine Blackford in enamelling and Kenneth Puka in polishing. The company manufactured two ranges. The well-established Norman Grant silver and enamel range was retained and a new collection, named ‘Dust’, was also designed by Norman. Still sourced from flora and fauna, the ‘Dust’ range was more delicate and occasionally incorporated stones like diamonds or opals.

 

John has said, ‘Norman had been running a craft jewellery business and Dust Jewellery put technology behind it.’ Hand-making every piece of jewellery had inevitably made for limited quantity and price concerns: the support of technology speeded up the process and made the pieces more available to everyone without losing quality of design and impact.