Victor Mayer
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In 1890 Victor Mayer (1857-1956) founded the Victor Mayer jewelry company in Pforzheim, Germany. The manufacturer continued Fabergé jewelry production which had been led by Peter Carl Fabergé until 1917. The house of Victor Mayer is best known for its heirloom jewelry and vitreous enamel.
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[edit] Victor Mayer's early life
Victor Mayer was born in Pforzheim on 1 December 1857, eleven years after Peter Carl Fabergé, into a family of thriving entrepreneurs. Between 1872 and 1877, Victor Mayer served as an apprentice to the prestigious Pforzheim company Winter & Cie, where he underwent practical training and also followed a daily three-hour course at the specialist vocational school for goldsmith. At the time, Winter & Cie, inspired by the much publicized finds of Greek and Scyntian gold unearthed in Russia, specialized, like Fabergé, in the Archaeological Rivalist style. Next he worked for the engraver Carl Wenk before enlisting for three years as a musketeer in the 111th Infantry Regiment of Baden, based in Rastatt. Mayer spent three years in Vienna with Markowitsch&Son and Johann Schwerdtner, honing his skills. During the golden years of the rule of Emperor Franz Joseph, the Austrian capital was a centre of artistic creativity, and the quality of its jewelry production was at its peak.
[edit] Victor Mayer Co.
Back in Pforzheim, Mayer founded a partnership with Edward Vogel in 1890, whom he bought out in 1889. He married Karolina Emilie Niemand of Baden Baden, daughter of a self-employed carpenter, investing her dowry in the Victor Mayer Co. The German town of Pforzheim had become a center for jewelry production in 1767 when the Margrave Karl Friedrich of Baden established a watch and jewellery factory in an orphanage. With the upturn of business following the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, the number of jewellers in Pforzheim grew to one hundred and sixtyseven. In 1913 half of Pforzheims citizens were employed in the jewelry making business.[1]. The existing middle class revived an influx of businessmen, doctors and lawyers, all of whom wanted to show off their recently acquired wealth with well furnished houses, fine cloth- and valuable jewelry.
In 1905 Mayer designed and built a large neo-Gothic house at Bleichstrasse 88 which accommodated both the family and the workshops.
In the following years the company became internationally known for its Guilloché, precision cigarette cases, medallions, cull flinks, rings and most importantly gold and silver boxes. Victor Mayer had acuired the same techniques as Fabergé to create the translucent enamel layered upon Guilloché gold surfaces. International firms such a Tiffany & Co, Dunhill (cigar brand), and Cartier SA as well as Wempe, René Kern, ordered finely crafted series of jewels and objects. The company has produced jewelry under licence for the Olympic Games and Fabergé, and most recently Bottega Veneta of Gucci Group.
[edit] Family business
Mayer's father, Edward, was an innkeeper at the Gasthof zum Kreuz located at Pforzheim's St Georgensteige. Three of his brothers were to go into the jewelry trade: Albert and Roman opened jewelry shops in Switzerland and Julius, together with his brother-in-law Gustav Meyle (husband of their sister Friederike), set up the Meyle&Mayer jewelry factory in Pforzheim. Augusta Mayer married a businessman and Rudolf became a hotelier in Switzerland.
Two of Mayers sons, Victor and Julius, died in World War I. His daughter Else Mayer founded a nunnery and moved to Bonn. His sole surviving son Oscar Mayer (1895-1986), an experienced goldsmith, and Edmund Mohr (1895-1973), an economist and banker who was married to Mayer's daughter Maria Mayer, became partners in the firm in 1925.
In 1965 Edmund Mohr's son Herbert Mohr-Mayer and his cousin Hubert Mayer entered the family business. They acquired one of the world's last enamelling workshops which had previously worked almost exclusively for Victor Mayer Co.
Today the fourth generation of the Victor Mayer family is running the family owned business: Marcus O. Mohr, Daniel Mohr, and Philipp Mohr, the three sons of Dr. Herbert Mohr-Mayer.
[edit] Workmaster of Fabergé
In the 1980s the Malcolm Forbes collection of Fabergé eggs in New York made the famous jewellery name popular again. Fabergé as a pop icon became once again synonymous with ultimate wealth and style.
In his time Peter Carl Fabergé outsourced most of his jewelry production to work masters. For over 70 years there had been no work master who had the professional "know-how" and resourcefulness in the application of various enamel recipes that would have enabled him to work in the spirit of Fabergé. In 1989 the New York-based Fabergé (cosmetics) company which is owned by Unilever granted the famous Fabergé brand to the new work-master Victor Mayer Co. The company has since carried the brand name Fabergé and created the contemporary Fabergé (line). Fabergé expert and author, his Imperial and Royal Highness Geza von Habsburg, has described Victor Mayer as a worthy follower to the Fabergé name in his 2005 book publication "Fabergé then and now"[2].
[edit] Quality and techniques
With specialized knowledge and traditional manufacturing techniques Victor Mayer has continued the legacy of the Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé. Many of the skills that are required to create the look of a Fabergé Egg have been preserved or rediscovered by the company. The trademark Basse-taille enamel is a trade secret of Victor Mayer and has been refined to create its designs. The company Victor Mayer has, as Fabergé had in his time, at its disposal enamel in 144 different colours, which, when applied layer upon layer, can produce innumerable hues of enamel. Some of the 18Kt gold Fabergé Eggs are covered with more than 12 layers of enamel and inlays of gold leaf ornamentations. Besides this, the Fabergé workmaster Victor Mayer can avail himself of more than 40 goldsmith professions, mostly extinct goldsmith trades, that are no longer taught, such as Ziseleuer, Guillocheur, Emailleur and Pailletteur. [3] French enamelling - the Champlevé technique with its translucent enamel on a Moiré Guilloché background, which was especially popular with Peter Carl Fabergé - is employed again by the contemporary Fabergé workmaster, Victor Mayer.
Nowadays the quality of Fabergé enamel can be greatly improved by computer-regulated colour-specific process control. The overall enamel process still bears the mark of traditional handicraft, governed by ancient recipes and company secrets. Every piece of jewelry that leaves the workshop is numbered and, according to tradition, bears the old "Fabergé" hallmark and the work-master mark "VM". The number of copies of each object is strictly limited.
[edit] Fabergé exhibitions
In 1990 Victor Mayer issued a limited edition of Faberge eggs and jewelry, first shown in 1991 at Palais Monteglas, Munich. The Gorbachev Peace Egg was presented to Mikhail Gorbachev by Dr. Herbert Mohr-Mayer.In 1996 Fabergé jewellery by Victor Mayer was shown together with the works of Peter Carl Fabergé at the Metropolitan Museum, New York [4]. The collection of Fabergé Eggs was the center piece of the Russian Pavillion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany. "Faberge. A Return To Russia" was the name of an exhibition staged at the Moscow Krelmin's Armory in 2001. On display were some thirty pieces of jewelry created by Victor Mayer.
By 2005 the family owned company had eighty employees and twelve international salesmen.
