I was born in Irkutsk, Russia. Yes, that’s Siberia! And yes, the winters are very cold (think Canada), but summers are temperate and glorious. Irkutsk is a fascinating city with a long history involving the fine arts and literature. As far back as the 17th century, Irkutsk was an outpost for trade with China in luxury goods, including gold, diamonds, and silk. And in the 19th century, many Russian artists, writers, and intellectuals were exiled to Irkutsk for their role in the Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I, which seeded Irkutsk with what would become a rich intellectual and artistic culture—earning Irkutsk today’s reputation as the “Paris of Siberia.” (Rudolf Nureyev, history’s greatest male ballet dancer, was born in Irkutsk. As was Denis Matsuev, a childhood classmate of mine and one of the world’s leading concert pianists.) The city sits on a tributary of Lake Baikal, the largest lake in the world, and is blanketed by heavenly white birch forests surrounded by the Taiga—an endless expanse of conifer trees reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Russians do so love beauty, from physical nature, to Faberge eggs, to the Bolshoi and Kirov, to the soaring melodies of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky. These are my inspirations as a designer, and they live deep in my soul.

I emigrated to the United States in the early 1990s, eventually settling in Chicago. (Even Siberia did not prepare me for the searing winds of a Chicago winter!) I located my studio on the 9th floor of Chicago’s famed Mallers Building, the very heart of Chicago’s Jewelers’ Row. What an electrifying atmosphere! Thirteen floors of designers, dealers, cutters, wholesalers, retailers, rogues and mensches—all working together to create masterpieces for clients around the world. (I still miss the Mallers Deli, a world-class delicatessen specializing in Russian-Jewish classics!) In 2008, one of my clients urged me to enter her engagement ring in a New York jewelry competition for JCK Magazine—the jewelry industry’s leading peer journal. The next thing I knew, I won first place in the coveted Diamond Jewelry category! That line has been known by various names, including “Verona,” but I eventually settled on “Murashka,” which means “goose bump” in Russian. Much more fitting.   

In 2012, I moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, where I scaled back my work for a few years. But in April 2019, I opened a luxury showroom on Winslow Way East in Harbor Square—steps from the ferry terminal. What fun! This is the location of my office, too, where I meet and counsel clients, and also of my workshop, which is now roomy enough for two bench jewelers to work side-by-side on settings, polishings, re-sizings, and all manner of repairs and new construction. There’s simply no substitute for having this capability in-house. And speaking of exciting, after being open for only a few months, in October 2019 I was honored with the Bainbridge Review’s “Best of Bainbridge Readers’ Choice Award.” Very humbling. 

My clients and I are deeply involved in every stage of the collaborative design and redesign process, from initial consultation, to hand sketches, to stone selection, to CAD renderings, to wax molds, to finished pieces. It is a true partnership and an intimate dialogue—where my clients are often co-designers of their own one-of-a-kind pieces. And like my colleagues on Jewelers’ Row in Chicago and New York, I work by appointment only. That’s important. It doesn’t mean you need to be an aristocrat to work with me. But it does mean that you should be treated like one—with a truly private and dedicated experience that involves my full and undivided energy and attention. That is the grand tradition of the old-world European bespoke jeweler, a tradition to which I am ruthlessly faithful. I know of no other way.

The Winslow Showroom