Alexandre Tchertoff
Born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on 19 July 1892, Alexandre Tchertoff was raised in a family belonging to the Russian nobility.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he fled his homeland and eventually arrived in France on 13 January 1923, after spending time in Serbia and Great Britain.
In one of life's ironies for a Russian émigré, he met his future wife around 1925 on Rue de Moscou in Paris.
Alexandre Tchertoff was also a talented painter. He exhibited his work in Russia as early as the age of twenty. After the Liberation of France, he held an exhibition in Annecy, presenting twenty-one charcoal portraits of some of the most prominent figures of the French Resistance in Haute-Savoie.
In Paris, he reunited with Prince Poutiatine and Orest de Klemm, fellow Russian émigrés, with whom he founded the Vera company. The business emerged from the network of White Russian aristocrats living in exile—many of whom had belonged to the circles of Tsarskoye Selo, the Corps of Pages, and the Horse Guards of Imperial Russia. This background helps explain both the company's initial financial resources, including capital investment and European business connections, and the choice of the feminine Russian name Vera, meaning faith or trust, while also being a prestigious name within the Russian nobility. The company's relationships with Boris Zvorykin, Louis Vuitton and Mappin & Webb also originated from these same social networks of the Russian émigré aristocracy.
In 1931, Alexandre Tchertoff began manufacturing jigsaw puzzles at 395 Rue de Vaugirard, before moving successively to 5 Rue Auguste Vitu and later 190 Rue Lecourbe, all located in Paris's 15th arrondissement.
In January 1934, he founded the Vera company (see the dedicated chapter).
During the German occupation of France, Alexandre Tchertoff was imprisoned in Savoie.
Considered stateless under French law until 1946, he was granted French citizenship by decree on 6 August 1946 (Official Journal, Decree No. 7128-46).
His only son, Robert Tchertoff, described him as "a fatalistic optimist, like every true Russian."
Alexandre Tchertoff died in 1976.