Marel Works was the second of the two workshops Pierre Cartier established at Cartier New York, opened in 1925 to handle the firm's silverwork and goldwork. The name was a contraction of the first names of his daughter Marion and his wife Elma. While American Art Works made the firm's high jewellery, Marel Works produced the smaller objects that filled out a great house's catalogue: cigarette cases, picture frames, vanity sets, clasps for handbags, charms.
The workshop was run from its early days by Albert Klauss, a German silversmith who had fled the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s and remained at Cartier for more than thirty years. The stories of his workshop, including the German poems his apprentices would recite to lift his mood when he was unhappy with a day's work, are in The Cartiers, ch. 7.
Unlike American Art Works, which was dissolved in May 1941 and replaced by Vors & Pujol, Marel Works continued operating through the war and into the post-war era.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), pp. 240, 479, footnote 571n240
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007)
- New York State Department of State, Corporation/Business Entity database, DOS ID21732 (cited in The Cartiers footnote)
