Marchak
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Source A. Le Tellier Template:August 2006
The House of Marchak (Russian: МАРШАКА) was founded by Joseph Marchak, a young talented jeweller in 1878, in Kiev, then Russia. Considered one of the great competitors of Fabergé at the beginning of last century and sometimes called "The Cartier of Kiev", the Marchak company employed 150 workers at the start of the Russian Revolution (1917). Purveyor of the great men of our time, crowned heads, chiefs of states, as well as collectors or fond of jewelry, Marchak also designed for the Tsar.
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[edit] History
[edit] Kiev, 1868
Young Joseph Marchak, then 14 years old, left his hometown and family to start an apprenticeship in a jewelry workshop. Ten years later, he launched his own business, in the Podol, a poor Kiev neighborhood. The hundred rubles he received as a dowry from his young wife not being enough, he pawned his only costume and with the money earned, he handcrafted his first item: a gold chain.
Within a year, he moved out up-town and settled in a five-room flat at 4, Kreschatyk, Kiev’s main street. Business was doing well and he gained notoriety. The production got more and more diversified and his young chain-maker days were quickly forgotten. Be they jewelry or goldsmith works, Joseph Marchak ceaselessly created and innovated.
[edit] Turning to the International
In 1885, he employed a score of persons in the workshop. At the end of the century, Russia was prosperous and orders were flowing. Joseph traveled a lot, and he took part in many exhibitions in Moscow, Saint Petersburg. As from 1890, Joseph Marchak set out on a journey to France. Six years later, Tsar Nicolas II would lay the first stone to the most elegant bridge of Paris, the Pont Alexander III. Sumptuous parties enlightened the most romantic of all capital cities. Russia had a great impact on France.
In 1893, Joseph’s reputation went across the ocean. He was awarded a medal at the World's Fair in Chicago held in 1893 and in Antwerp in 1894. Every time he came back from one of his trips, he developed and improved the techniques he had discovered abroad. Courageous, he built back the workshops devastated by the fire in 1899. He made the most of this misfortune by enlarging and modernizing the premises and applied an admitted innovating labor organization. One hundred and fifty persons worked in the Kiev workshops. Within a little more than twenty years, Joseph Marchak had become one the most important jeweler of the Russian Empire and his brand was a household name.
The year 1913 marked the 300th anniversary of the Romanov’s Dynasty. To commemorate it, Tsar Nicolas II came to Kiev and was presented with Marchak specially-made official gifts. These were the great days for the jeweler’s reputation. It was not long since he was called “The Cartier of Kiev”, then outright rival of the famed Fabergé. Meantime, Alexander Marchak, the youngest son of Joseph, born in 1890, was studying law and attending some classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Art Deco in Paris. He had a passion: photography. However, the outbreak of World War I compelled him to go back to Russia.
[edit] Moving to France
When he arrived in Kiev, Alexander had to fulfill mandatory service requirement in the Russian Army. He was sent to the Austrian front where he performed airborne reconnaissance photography which later proved to be of significant importance to war techniques. The period was troubled and chaotic. World War I, Russian revolution: it was no time for jewelry anymore. Joseph Marchak died prematurely from cancer at the age sixty-four. As a great number of Russians left their country in haste to join Europe, the Marchak family also fled away concealing the last remnants of the jewelry creations under their clothes. Upon their arrival in Paris, they were greeted by Joachim, one of Joseph’s five sons, who had already settled as a physician in a Paris hospital.
[edit] 1920: The rebirth of the House of Marchak
[edit] In Paris
The French capital was living again. Designers, craftsmen, jewelers came back from the front. The postwar economic climate was still very fragile. That meant price increase, foodstuffs shortages, such as milk, sugar, meat, and wine. These were hard times but sternness was out of the question. The “Roaring Twenties” were beginning; it was time for exuberance, for mutations and changes. Women adopted short bobbed hair styles. Fanciful and colorful jewelry was in fashion. It was the jazz and Man Ray pictures era. Party was going full swing in Montparnasse; Dadaist happenings hold their own against the “Bal nègre” launched by Robert Desnos.
As soon as he arrived in Paris, Alexander Marchak hopped on the train of this incredible era and rapidly opened a shop on the famous Rue de La Paix, at number 4 right next to Place Vendôme and the Hotel Ritz Paris, where a multitude of wealthy foreigners ceaselessly flocked since its opening in 1898. Turntable of the luxury industry, the Place Vendôme and Rue la Paix neighborhood already hosted numerous renown designers, a perfumer and many jewelers and goldsmiths, glove makers, shirt designers as well as hat makers.
True to its origins, the originality and the quality of its creations set him apart from the world of the Parisian jewelry sphere. Then, war broke out again and Europe witnessed the decline of the whole business.
[edit] 1950 : Towards a new Marchak generation
[edit] The second revival
Right after the war, Alexander Marchak hired Alexander Diringer, admitted designer, long-known by the Rue de la Paix people. He remained designer of the House of Marchak until the end of the sixties. Within a year, Jacques Verger joined the company. Alexander Marchak worked out the opening of his store in Paris and the development of the brand name in France whereas Jacques Verger went out to the conquest of American women’s sensitive fiber. The Marchak spirit lived on thanks to the hearty collaboration of Jacques Verger and his creators. Alexander Marchak retired in 1957.
[edit] The American years
In 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s was on the screens. This now very-famous book and movie would epitomize a whole generation. Young women of the highest classes of the American society of the 1960s loved luxury, fashion, jewels, stones, imposing sets that they dare wear in the mornings. Euphoria was the key word, nothing was too beautiful. Jacques Verger noticed it quite quickly and created luxurious colorful jewelry for his American customers. His rings were worn high-up on the finger, paved with diamonds, emeralds, rubies finely garlanded with stones, emerald foliage or redcurrant rubies supporting a central red, green or blue stone, varying in accordance with the hues of the ring. Each piece was unique, the New York clients were thrilled and Parisian women were not long to follow.
Clustered undulating multicolored brooches made the success of the House of Marchak which entirely came from the charm of these “object-jewels” that clearly marked a break in the tradition of conventional French jewelry. The price of the stone was of no importance, if need be, the set would end breech lock upside-down in order to confer it another light, a new sparkle, definitely modern. Aesthetics were more important than the intrinsic value of the stones.
[edit] Morocco
In the sixties, Jacques Verger met and became faithful friends, which was quite unusual at the time, His Majesty Hassan II. The King of Morocco was a fervent and enthusiastic admirer of the French culture. A subtle, educated and well-read man, he shared with Jacques Verger, the taste for beautiful objects, unique and precious sets. As Joseph Marchak had become one of the purveyors of Tsar Nicolas II, Jacques Verger had Marchak become one of the jewelers appointed to His Majesty Hassan II.
[edit] Marchak today
In 2000, one of the only heirs of Alexander Marchak to bear the Marchak name decided to revive the name of his great-grand father by creating a new collection. The collection has traveled around the world, in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, the United States, Japan and Australia.
[edit] See also
Art Deco Jewelry by Sylvie Raulet, publisher Thames & Hudson.
Halligan's Illustrated World's Fair, October 1893 issue.
