HESKETH
RACING
COLLECTION
Est. 2016 and bringing heritage
racing into the here and now!
This was the ultimate end goal and inspiration behind this incredible collection of miniature, solid silver replicas with Hesketh Racing.
Partnership with Hesketh Racing and Alyssa Smith Jewellery – Est. 2016
The concept for the collection was first imagined back in early 2015. Alyssa was approached by Retro GP, who hold the trademark rights to the Hesketh brand with the possibility of working together on a collection of jewellery.
This was the kind of opportunity that Alyssa had only dreamed of throughout the years of running her jewellery brand, and our small team of expert jewellers were soon pulling out all the stops, and exploring ways to bring F1 legend, James Hunt’s iconic mascot- the Hesketh bear, to life in miniature, 3 dimensional form.
BRINGING HISTORY TO LIFE AGAIN
In the 1970’s, the privately funded Hesketh F1 team brought romance, rock and roll and adventure to Grand Prix racing. The epic rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda started when Hunt was given his first Formula One drive by Lord Hesketh back in 1974, and the rest was history, as we all know!
As a small, British brand, to be given the opportunity to work with Retro GP and Hesketh Racing was just incredible, and bringing heritage racing to the ‘here and now’ so that collectors around the world could enjoy these wearable masterpieces in solid silver was something we were so excited to be able to bring to market.
” Hesketh Bear absolutely went hand in
hand with our ‘wear the memories’ brand
ethos, and I was so excited to be creating
this miniature yellow bear in solid, 3 dimensional
sterling silver. We wanted him to provide a delightful
reminder of the halcyon days when the stars of
motorsport featured on both the front,
and the back of the papers!”
The collection was released in April 2016, and saw collectors from
all corners of the globesnapping up their Hesketh Bears.
” Giving him a tail was the hardest part of the design process actually, because
when you are taking a historically 2 dimensional design and turning it 3
dimensional, there is a huge element of imagination needed, as you never really
see what he looks like behind! We worked closely with Retro GP to get
Hesketh Bear just right, and we even engraved a tiny union jack onto his
helmet. This was probably the most challenging part, as the union jack isn’t
even 5mm in size! I think we have done the mascot justice, and we’re just so
pleased that our collectors around the world love our miniature silver version!”
STAYING ON TRACK
The first release in the collection was so popular that the team got to work on the next installation in the Hesketh series- turning James Hunt’s 308 car into a miniature replica. This was a challenging process and took months of product development with RetroGP to get right. Alyssa replaced the blue and red stripes on the original 308 with gold painted stripes, and engraved the 308 logo on the base of the car.
Turning something so big into something as miniature as a finger nail, without losing key details in the design was challenging in more ways than one, but the design came to market in 2017, and was an absolute hit.
Our Hesketh collection is in partnership with Retro GP,
and we hope you will love these pieces as much as we have enjoyed creating them.