Percy Marks (1879 – 1935)
While three generations of the Marks family stand behind Percy Marks, Sydney’s notable jewellery firm, the Sydney founder, the jewellery designer Percy Marks, played a singular role in the acceptance of Australian opal as the nation’s signature gemstone.
Marks’s family (also jewellers) came from New Zealand and the UK. Percy was enrolled in the Sydney Technical College as early as 1894 and apprenticed to the Sydney jeweler Richard (R.H.) Jenkins (b.1841) of Market Street. Marks later opened his first shop in the same street.
Marks became a public figure (occasionally described as “The Opal King”) through his promotion of what he called “dark opal”, that is, opal with a dark body colour such as black, grey, blue or green. Marks explained in an interview that he first become aware of “dark opal” in 1900. He did not actively work with the stone until 1907 when he went to Lightning Ridge and returned “…with two suitcases packed with the most glorious opal I have ever seen in one lot.”
Opal was not a popular gem at the turn of the century and Marks candidly stated, “My problem was to find a market”. His genius in design marketing is his greatest legacy to Australian design history. Marks designed and distributed opal jewellery and opal exotica to a roll call of international visitors, major and minor aristocracy as well as Australian celebrities. By 1935, Australian opal was celebrated in poetry and dance as well as in settings.
At his most energetic, no Sydney visitor was safe from a Percy Marks presentation of opal. When Amy Johnson, the British pioneer aviator flew solo from the UK to Australia in 1930, her landing was received with fanfare and an opal brooch from Percy Marks. In 1911, Marks eagerly offered 16 black opal scarf pins to the runners-up in the NSW Rugby League competition. Boating and model aircraft trophies were also endowed.
Marks was keenly aware of the power of celebrity and was an active patron of the performing arts. His sister, Madame Emily Marks, was a notable Sydney singer and voice teacher with sound music connections. Amongst his earliest musical bequests was a “…[conductor’s] baton made of Australian wood, mounted in Australian gold and set with rare black opals” presented to the “March King”, John Phillip Sousa, during a tour of Sydney and Melbourne in 1911.
Gifts to artists gave Marks a greater opportunity to indulge his imagination and the French actress and singer Mlle. Alice Delysia, Elsa Stralia [Elsie Fischer], the internationally acclaimed South Australian soprano who premiered at Covent Garden, London, and of course, Dame Nellie Melba, were recipients. As a special tribute, Dame Nellie received a bouquet containing a rare black opal mounted in platinum by Marks.
Toward the end of his life, Marks seemed to sense his mortality and the jeweller’s munificence grew. In 1933, he proposed to “make a gift to the Australia of a national monument proposed to be in “… the shape of a fountain on [a] base of Australian white marble, surmounted by a dome about three feet in diameter set with opals. […] [I]t is Mr Marks’ intention to ask the Prime Minister to accept the gift on behalf of the Commonwealth.” The monument proposal’s fate is unknown. Marks died two years later.
April 2011
Obituary. “Mr Percy Marks.” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1935, p.12. Marks’s obituary is the major source for his career survey in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as well as Anne Schofield and Kevin Fahy’s Australian Jewellery. David Ell Press, 1990.
Jenkins was a witness at a trial of a jewellery thief at the Sydney Police Court recorded in the Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1880, p.6.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1934, page 18.
“The Black Opal.” [poem] Fred Emerson Brooks, ca.1913 and “The Dance of the Black Opals”, 1913 in “Opals.” The poem is printed in the Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1926, page 10.
Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 1911, p.10.
Obituary. “Mr Percy Marks.” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1935, page 12.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2020
