English jeweler William Tolliday became famous in the late 1960s for his extraordinarily detailed and fantastically fairy-tale castles. Tolliday’s creations were sold exclusively by Garrard & Co. His creations are a work of jewelry, literally and figuratively, magnificent castles with carefully and scrupulously executed details.

It took several months to make each castle. Tolliday’s locks were made to order for very wealthy clients. The number of such works is small, and they rarely appear at auctions. Famous sights often served as prototypes for these magnificent masterpieces of jewelry art.

Tolliday was born in 1915 and spent most of his career at the famous London jewelry company Garrard & Co, which until 2007 was the supplier of the British royal house.

Towering from sparkling geodes, William Tolliday’s fairytale castles of gold and gems were created during his successful 25-year partnership with Garrard & Co. Before joining the company as a freelance craftsman in the late 1960s, he worked for famed jeweler Andrew Grim of Jermyn Street. In his studio above Garrard’s quarters in Regent Street, he had free rein.

According to the master, he was inspired to create fabulous castles by the sight of the London Parliament building and the buildings of Venice against the backdrop of the golden setting sun. The next work on the project began with a watercolor sketch, and then a mineral was chosen for the foundation. He used combinations of different shades of gold to emphasize the reliefs of the buildings and used diamonds for the windows, which gave them a glow and created the effect of the habitation of magical towers.

Tolliday’s first works at Garrard & Co were collages of gold in the form of plants or exotic architecture, created from his own sketches. They were first presented to the public at a special Garrard’s exhibition, which was a great success. Buyers sold out the work in less than a week.