How haven for art is made with widgets

Apr 20 2009 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

Not content with running the family business, Ramy Zack created the Biscuit Factory art gallery and studio. Now he also wants to create a cultural colony in a corner of Newcastle, reports Peter McCusker.

BUSINESS runs in Ramy Zack’s family to such an extent that the only relative of his who has been a paid employee in the last 300 years was regarded as a bit of a black sheep.

But his Uncle Dov was given special dispensation by the closely-knit Zack clan when he helped provide the electricity which allowed Israel to split the atom.

Zack took over the running of the family plastics business, at the age of 23, when his father Solomon died suddenly.

His dad, who was just 56, had left Israel to come to Newcastle when a new business opportunity presented itself.

And his grandfather Eliazor had fled Russia during the pre-war communist era leaving behind a personal fortun – which would be valued at £300m at today’s prices – amassed from owning the country’s biggest textile company.

Zack says: “In Jewish families someone always falls out with someone else and we were no different. Business is in our family’s blood. But Uncle Dov was brought back into the fold when he helped provide the electricity to split the atom.”

Zack is undeniably and understandably proud of his family’s roots.

He recalls: “At the time of the Russian revolution my grandfather’s business produced 10% of Russia’s textiles and it employed 2,500 people.

“But the business was taken by the communists. Eleven families were moved into their house and they were forced to live in the conservatory, which during the Russian winter was not a very warm place!

“My grandfather was a very benevolent employer and, when he was later jailed, he was petitioned out of prison by his former workers and he went back to the factory as a manager.

“He became involved in making toys, and later became a mature student at Moscow University where he studied metallurgy and was involved in the creation of a business that made the bayonets for the Russian troops during the Second World War.

“However, he saw the writing was on the wall and through his contacts he petitioned Stalin’s second wife, who was Jewish, and managed to get into the Kremlin to secure papers for Palestine, where he opened a business making frames for spectacles.”

Zack continues at a pace to explain how his family arrived in the North East when his father was invited, by a North East business associate, to become a partner in a Gateshead business – Team Valley Brush Company – which made artists’ brushes.

The family moved to Newcastle when Zack was eight. To compete with China and Hong Kong the business developed plastic handles for their brushes.

His father’s business partner left in 1980 and the company which is now based in Warwick Street, Shieldfield, is now known as Tyne Moulds and Machinery.

Zack was preparing for a great adventure when the business was thrust upon him following his father’s death.

He says: “I’d worked in the family business during school holidays and, with a degree in polymer science and technology from Manchester Polytechnic, I was planning on hitch-hiking around the world.

“There are plastics companies all over the globe and I was sure I would be able to fund my trip by working from time to time. I was preparing to head off to Australia first.”

But in 1984, the same year that he bought a nearby building which had once housed a biscuit factory, he was forced to take over the business.

Zack abandoned his travelling plans at once. “Someone had to pay the mortgage and the grocery bills and we had 30 employees to look after.

“There was a lot of responsibility to keep that going, but for me it was a no-brainer and I knew I just had to get on with it. I never entertained doing anything else.”