DAVID THOMAS (b. 1938)

David Thomas, a British jewelry designer, was born in London in 1938, where he studied at Twickenham Art School. He worked as a jeweler for Bolin, the Swedish crown jewelers, and eventually went on to study jewelry at the Royal College of Art, London, where he was appointed Royal Scholar. Early in his career, he was also included in the seminal International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery 1890-1961 in 1961.

In her essay “Four Modern Jewelers: Innovation in British Jewelry” in London Originals, Joanna Hardy writes that Thomas was one of the most innovative independent jewelers in the early 1960s. He is known for his fine castings, which led to the creation of new techniques such as “setting individual finished gold wires in casting wax so that each wire would stay finer and more polished than the surrounding cast-gold shapes.”

Thomas designed national coinage for the Royal Mint. He is a Freeman and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Thomas’s works are included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, De Beers Diamonds, and The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

Read more about David Thomas and his contemporaries in our catalog, London Originals, available for sale here.