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 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 goldsmiths. 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 Revivalist 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, cuff links, rings and most importantly gold and silver boxes. Victor Mayer had acquired 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 also produced jewelry for the Olympic Games and Fabergé.
[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.
[edit] Fabergé exhibitions
In 1996 Fabergé jewellery by Victor Mayer was shown together with the works of Peter Carl Fabergé at the Metropolitan Museum, New York [2]. 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.
[edit] References
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