CA Münchmeyer & Co.
CA Münchmeyer & Co. was a factory of silver-plated and gold-plated metal goods in Vienna .
history
The founders of CA Münchmeyer & Co., Carl Adalbert Münchmeyer and Ernst Rust, who ceased operations in 1863, were among the first to replace and replicate massive precious metal objects by means of silver plating and gold plating in large quantities Recordings.
The continuously expanding business operation required Adalbert Münchmeyer to take over the management of the Berlin factory with the branch in Paris, while the Vienna factory and its branches at Mariahilfer Strasse 10 in the 6th district and at Waitznergasse 14 in Budapest from the two shareholders Ernst Rust and Adolf Wilhelm Hetzel was taken over.
The Viennese factory establishment was housed in a specially built, five-storey raw brick building in the back wing of the house at Kaiserstraße 83 in the 7th district .
The whole factory building had extensive basement rooms, so that not only the steam engine for driving the transmissions for the basement, ground floor and first floor, as well as the boiler house , but also all the studios of the foundry , press shop and with Sandblower equipped matting shop . The mechanical equipment of the press shop consisted of powerful steam and hand presses , of which a friction press with extraordinary dimensions and a pressure capacity of one million kilograms was particularly important.
The metal printing , belt and grinding shop were located in the ground floor . With these workshops was a soldering space , as well as the orderly room of the factory leader in connection.
The manufacture of factory products took place in the basement and ground floor. On the first floor, the products were handed over to the electroplaters and provided electrolytically in gold and silver baths with that solid coating of precious metal deposits , which was a recognized advantage of Münchmeyer's Chinese silver objects. In addition to galvanic gold plating and silver plating , however, also nickel plating , as well as oxidation and all relevant modern techniques are used.
In the end, the metal bodies came to be polished and finalized and now left the first floor for assembly with glass and porcelain objects.
They were transported to the assembly rooms on the third floor by a large goods and passenger elevator, which traveled all five floors of the factory. The assembly rooms on the third floor were filled with large stocks of glass and porcelain goods , bowls , vases , plates and the like, such as those needed to adjust the individual objects of use. Since all the sales objects that were ready for dispatch were piled up on this floor, the expedition had also been relocated to the same floor as intended.
So all orders from the third floor were processed in such a way that the ordered items were first put together here and then wrapped in paper. The lift then took them to the packaging room in the basement, from where the loading took place.
The factory had a very large number of article models and types that met contemporary tastes. For this reason, we always had to keep a larger stock of at least half-finished and finished raw materials in stock.
The fourth floor was reserved for stacking these stocks of goods. The size and value of the inventories could be approximated as the catalog of factory products contained 3,000 item numbers, and each item was kept in ample stock, often in the hundreds.
The technical management and the commercial operation of the factory was carried out from the executive offices and offices on the second floor. Adjacent to the latter were the studios of the engravers , guillocheurs and chiselers , as well as the sample room with all products and specimen copies.
Products
The factory produced for use and luxury items from China silver in all kinds of genres, styles and value gradations, from the smallest and cheapest Galanterieartikeln as butter dishes , sugar baskets, bread baskets , essays , writing tools , smoke sets , to the heaviest silver-plated cutlery , candelabras , centrepieces , jardinières , furthermore hotel , restaurant and coffee house facilities , boarding houses , health resorts , steam ships , hospital administrations , officers' mess etc., which were granted full replacement for solid silver objects with a perfect artistic development and their irretrievable, like hammered silver ceiling.
Out of special consideration for the neighbors and the neighboring residents, the company had also spared no expense in order to prevent any nuisance in the area by installing a smoke-consuming device of the latest design.
The sales of the Viennese factory products took place primarily to the Austrian and Hungarian crown lands and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian imperial lands. But there were also significant exports abroad, particularly to the Balkans , Greece , Turkey and Egypt . The export to the other European countries and overseas trading centers, on the other hand, was largely left to the factory built in Berlin (SO Wrangelstrasse 4) and also to the establishment at rue Bichat 52 listed in Paris before 1898 .
CA Münchmeyer & Co. merged into Argentor-Werke Rust & Hetzel in 1902 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p C. A. Münchmeyer & Co. In: Presented by the industrialists of Austria under the high protectorate of His K. and K. Highness of the Most Serene Archduke Franz Ferdinand (ed.) : The large-scale industry in Austria . Festival ceremony for the glorious fiftieth anniversary of the reign of His Majesty the Emperor Franz Josef I. Volume 2 . Leopold Weiss, Vienna 1898, III. Metal industry, p. 380-381 .
