Marcel Boucher
(1898 - 1964)
Marcel Boucher was born in Paris, France in 1898. Boucher’s mother was a seamstress. His father died when he was very young. During World War I, from 1914 to 1918, Marcel was assigned to the French Ambulance
Corps. He was never sent to the front line since he was the only son of a widow.
Boucher joined Cartier as an apprentice model-maker after the war. In 1923, he was transferred to Cartier’s New York’s workshop. In 1929, after the stock exchange crash, Marcel found himself out of work and started freelancing and designing show buckles and costume jewelry for Mazer Brother.
In 1937, Marcel Boucher and his partner, Arthur Halbersatdt, opened Boucher and Cie. Boucher handled the design work and production of their costume jewelry, while Halberstatdt worked the front showroom and sales. Boucher's 1930s designs included exotic birds that had a depth and a sense of movement that had not been seen in costume jewelry before. Boucher’s love of mechanics extended to his jewelry designs, by adding dimension and a sense of motion to the flat jewelry of the 1930s. Also worth mentioning is his celebrated "Punchinello" whose arms rise by pulling on a chain; the pelican whose beak opens to catch a fish; and his "night and day" series of flowers with petals which open and close. From 1937 to 1972 the company produced imaginative metalwork and rhinestone costume jewelry.
In 1936, Boucher designed his first line of costume jewelry and in 1939, sold a collection of his designs to the New York City store Saks Fifth Avenue. From the very first designs, Boucher’s jewelry was notable for its superb workmanship in metal, rhinestones and enamel. The quality of the craftsmanship is such that Boucher pieces are often mistaken for precious jewelry.
In 1941, during the Second World War, due to metal usage restrictions, Boucher moved his company to Mexico because of its abundance of silver. He bought a house and some land in Cuernavaca and commuted to the factory in Mexico City, where his "Parisiana" line of cast sterling jewelry was produced.
When the war ended, Marcel sold the Mexico City operation and moved back permanently to New York. During this time, Marcel Boucher produced and extraordinary variety of designs including an exceptional line in cubist style, a striking black moor head and a beautiful bird-of-paradise design.
In 1947, when Christian Dior launched his "New Look" collection, Marcel started to design and produce elegant parures which reflected Dior’s theme of the post-war and the return of femininity and splendor.
In 1949, Sandra Semensohn joined the Boucher Company as Boucher’s assistant replacing Halberstadt who had decided to leave the partnership. Sandra had worked for two years as a fine jewelry designer for Harry Winston in New York. By the 1950s, Boucher had adopted a more traditional look heavily influenced by contemporary trends in precious jewelry, designs with animal pins, buckle motifs, and leaf-themed rhinestone parures from the 1950s and 1960s are common.
Marcel Boucher was a meticulous designer who would spend hours in the public library to make sure each design was perfect. The firm Marcel Boucher and Cie. produced Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections, which required about three hundred designs each. Every year Boucher would produce a showcase piece for stores to showcase in their window called a "first-nighter." One of these was the "Miss America" tiara, which Boucher made every year.
Initially, Marcel created the themes and design concepts of all jewelry but eventually Semensohn started developing her own designs which were subsequently approved or disapproved by Boucher. One of the designs from this period is the Hummingbird.
Boucher wanted jewelry that was chic and fluid, with simple lines. He was very demanding of himself and others, and always wanted nothing less than perfection. Most Boucher pieces are signed and carry an inventory number. Some examples are MB Sterling, Phrygian cap, and Boucher with a copyright symbol.
In the 1950s Boucher and Cie had from 60 to 80 employees. By mid 1950s, Boucher was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lowering of standards in the costume jewelry industry. Nonetheless, Marcel and Sandra continued to innovate; both with designs and with materials, but in 1958 Sandra left the firm and joined Tiffany & Co. as Chief Designer. After three years, she returned, looking for more of the creativity that designing costume jewelry offered. During this time she designed the enameled Boucher peacock with Boucher. They experimented with leather and ostrich and mother-of-pearl jewelry. Boucher also designed a series of dogs with his habitual attention to detail. The only freelance design produced during this time was the skunk, which Marcel and the Neiman Marcus buyer both favored.
Boucher also produced a lower-quality line signed “Margoux”, far less valuable than pieces signed “Boucher” or “MB”. Besides having great attention to detail work and a knack for fluid designs, Boucher vintage jewelry frequently featured very high quality rhinestones, glass pearls, and enamel. Many pieces were so well made that some people could mistake them for real jewelry.
In October 1964, Sandra and Marcel were married. Six weeks later, Marcel Boucher died. Boucher left his business to his wife Sandra. She continued to run Boucher and Cie, but Sandra was a designer, not a businesswoman. She continued to introduce innovative costume jewelry, but she eventually sold the business to Davorn Industries in 1970. Sandra designed watches for Davorn for the next 5 years and continued to mark them "Marcel Boucher" even after the sale of Boucher and Cie.
