Jewelry Destination: Madrid, Spain

Madrid city center “Bear with Strawberry” sculpture

Madrid’s famous paella

Catedral San Antonio des Alemanes

Salvador Dali, Goya, Picasso, Flamenco, Paella, Futbol, cafe con leche, the famous architecture and cathedrals are all wonderful reasons to visit Spain! There is one hidden gem located in Madrid’s city center that is particularly enthralling – the Maison Grassy designer jewelry store and combined horological museum. Even in such cities as New York, it’s rare to find a museum inside a store, so you may find the antique clock exhibit aside the designer jewelry a bit surprising, as well as fascinating!

French antique clock in Maison Grassy showroom

Maison Grassy’s horological display in the showroom

Mainly comprised of master timepieces and important fine antique clocks throughout history, the horological museum starts in the main showroom and works its way downstairs into its own room- there are dozens of large clocks to stop and drool over. Occasionally Maison Grassy hosts master watchmaking classes.

One of Grassy’s ready-to-wear fine jewelry collections

Grassy coral suite on display

Jewelry and watch-making go hand in hand. A fine time piece is just as laborious to create, well-designed and engineered, exclusive, expensive and sentimental to the wearer as any piece of traditional jewelry that does not function as a clock.Those responsible for bringing these special, antique English and French clocks to the museum are Pérez de Olaguer-Feliu and Alexandre Grassy.

Each clock is different from the next. Some are ornate and whimsical while others are austere and stern, but all have an eye-catching design that attracts your attention as it is displayed in a room full of furniture that is also from the same time period (and is meant to compliment what the display). The clocks and the jewelry displays are carefully dispersed so as not to compete with each other.

Grassy horological museum, courtesy (c) of Grassy.

It’s hard not to notice the jewelry that celebrities come to borrow; some are dazzling pieces with important stones, but each is in its own collection with a fascinating story behind it. Some of the loveliest are the designs of Patricia Reznak, Grassy’s artistic director. Reznak’s jewelry designs seem like an exhibition of her ephemeral interests, with each collection different from the next as she employs a variety of materials that she finds special. In one of her collections, she combines precious gemstones with organically modeled gold settings offset by semi-precious minerals that work together in flawless harmony. No two are exactly alike; each one an eye-catcher that would appeal to most everyone.

Patricia Reznak ring from the trio collection

Trio collection featuring gold vegetable-like settings holding chalcedony, agate, tsavorite, diamond and aventurine quartz

Contributed by Marissa Pearl