S.J. Phillips

S.J. Phillips is the grand old institution of the London jewellery trade — founded in 1869 by Solomon Joel Phillips and today one of the oldest family-owned antique dealers in the world. Now in its fifth generation, the firm is run by Nicolas, Jonathan and Francis Norton, great-grandsons of the founder, and specialises in antique and estate jewellery, English and Continental silver, gold snuff boxes, portrait miniatures and objets de vertu. Its stock of antique jewellery is among the largest available anywhere — the biggest display for purchase in the UK — supported by an in-house workshop and even a resident pearl stringer.

Having established itself as the largest silver dealer of the mid-nineteenth century, the firm went on to serve an extraordinary roll-call of clients: Queen Mary, Margaret Thatcher, the Rothschilds, J. Pierpont Morgan and William Randolph Hearst among them, with jewels passing through its hands from the collections of Empress Eugénie and Catherine the Great. Discretion has always been the house style — one reason the rich and royal have kept coming for over 150 years.

In 2017, after nearly a century and a half on Bond Street, S.J. Phillips moved to a second-floor salon at 26 Bruton Street, Mayfair — once the studio of royal couturier Norman Hartnell, opposite the birthplace of Queen Elizabeth II — marking the occasion with a celebrated 260-lot sale of silver at Sotheby’s. No appointment is needed to visit, and for collectors of period jewellery a piece with S.J. Phillips provenance remains a reference in itself.

Key products

Art Deco Diamond Double Clip Brooch by Cartier, London, c.1935 — £20,000–£50,000
A museum-quality example of the kind of signed jewel S.J. Phillips is famous for: a Cartier London double clip brooch from the height of the Art Deco period, taking a stylised buckle form with each half composed of overlapping double-C scrolls set throughout with diamonds. Double clips were the great convertible jewels of the 1930s — wearable together as one brooch or separated across a neckline or lapels — and signed Cartier examples with this quality of provenance rarely reach the open market. The firm’s Signed Jewels category also carries Boucheron, Castellani, Giuliano, Tiffany and Van Cleef & Arpels.
View the Cartier double clip brooch

The Antique Ring Collection
The heart of the shop and the reason many collectors make the pilgrimage: hundreds of rings spanning three centuries, from early and eighteenth-century pieces through Georgian harlequin clusters and five-stone Colombian emerald bands to twentieth-century diamond rings by the great houses. The trade press has called the firm’s ring holdings among the best antique collections to appear on the market in years, and the browsable categories — diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire, pearl, cameo and heart rings — make this the natural entry point for a first S.J. Phillips purchase.
Browse the ring collection

Press coverage

• Robb Report — an in-depth interview with the Norton family on the firm’s legendary history, royal clientele and the Bruton Street move: S.J. Phillips and its long, legendary history of jewellery
• Antiques Trade Gazette — the trade paper’s running coverage of the firm, from its record ring collections to the Sotheby’s silver sale: SJ Phillips news