Josef Marshak
Yosyp (Josef) Abramovych Marshak (1854, the shtetl of Hnativka in the Kyiv region — 22 August 1918, Kyiv) was a jeweller, entrepreneur and philanthropist, founder of the largest jewellery factory in Kyiv. At fourteen he left his poor, large family and moved to Kyiv, where he trained as a journeyman jeweller. On 2 May 1878 he opened his own small workshop in Podil — a date he himself regarded as the birthday of his enterprise. His starting capital was his wife's dowry of 100 roubles plus the money raised by pawning his only suit. By 1895 the factory already occupied a building on Khreshchatyk, with the firm's shop on the ground floor.
After visiting the 1890 Paris World's Fair, Marshak began exhibiting himself: Chicago (1893), Antwerp (1894), Kyiv (1897), Paris (1900), St Petersburg (1902) and Liège (1905, Grand Prix). Contemporaries called him the Cartier of Kyiv and a second Fabergé; it was the strength of his factory that made Fabergé close his Kyiv branch. A fire in 1899 caused 155,475 roubles of damage; he rebuilt the business and opened three more workshops. In 1908 he bought out the watch business of the Swiss dealer Célestin Verlé, from whom he had once rented his first two rooms. By 1913 the factory and its shops occupied the properties at Khreshchatyk 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8, ran seven engines and employed 126 people.
Marshak was among the first jewellers in Europe to employ and train women; adolescents at the factory finished their shift three hours early so they could attend school. In 1913 he opened a craft school there, which trained more than three hundred masters, and he chaired the Brilliant club, an association of Kyiv jewellers, engravers and watchmakers.
The factory produced earrings, medallions, pendants, brooches, chains, bracelets, rings and cufflinks, as well as silver tableware, vases, candlesticks, cups and cigarette cases; casting in silver and platinum was its trade secret. In 1911, for the imperial family's visit to Kyiv, it made a silver model of the Pedagogical Museum (architect Pavlo Alyoshin), now in the National Museum of the History of Ukraine. From the outbreak of the First World War its workshops made parts for bombs and telephone receivers.
His wife Liia (Elizaveta) died in August 1917, exactly a year before him; the couple had eight children — five sons and three daughters. Marshak died of cancer on 22 August 1918, and the factory was nationalised that same year. In 1920 his son Alexandre opened the Marchak jewellery salon in Paris.Collection106