About us

Hey there friends!

We are a very small family business. These pochade boxes are made by me. My name is Igor, I am a plein air painter and engineer. My wife Anna helps with making videos and she does all the hand sewing you may find on the website. We have two daughters, Maria and Sofia – they also help from time to time showing things to you on Instagram. That’s the whole Martletpochades, inc.

It all started about 10 years ago in Russia when I started thinking about learning art. I was on my own with this at first, but shortly after I found an artist teacher who helped me to build my skill. I was interested in oil painting so he told me I should try plein air painting. Nothing lets you feel colour like plein air painting.

I love hiking and cycling, and I love nature, so it went really well with plein air painting. I worked as engineer all week, and would paint on weekends. Even the Russian winter couldn’t stop me – I started snowshoeing. For about 3 years I painted two studies a week and it really paid in quality.

At first I was using a heavy easel, but it was exhausting. I would come home barely able to stand. So I decided to buy a lightweight easel before my back gave up on all this wild painting business. Suddenly I found out there was really nothing I could buy. Then I remembered I was an engineer. I built my first pochade box myself. I tried it for some time, then I built another, slightly better. And I did it again and again.

Some people liked what I was doing and asked me to make them a pochade box. I started to sell the boxes. And I did not stop improving the designs.

As I said, these things happen in Russia, and we were happily selling things on Etsy. We quit our jobs. Got a bunch of five-star reviews. It seemed like something we could spend our life doing.

Then Putin started his war. Well, I can’t say that came out of nowhere. I guess we saw that coming, just wouldn’t believe it was what it was.

Quickly we decided that this country was not for us anymore. We started to think where we could move and the best country was Armenia. We weren’t sure we could manage to start it all over in a new country, but somehow we did.

In a few rough years we managed to buy a house in the beautiful Lori province, Armenian Highland, near the town of Vanadzor.

I’d say we are really lucky. But it’s also about our constant work on improving the designs and maintaining quality. And of course, last but not least – many people stood by us and ordered boxes when we needed money. Surely we couldn’t make it without our clients. Thank you for the new life you gave us! We really hope to make some more good boxes for you to have fun with.

That’s our story so far. We’ve been making pochades for 6 years now and hope to continue in the same spirit.