Marcia Cook was born in Tacoma, Washington. She attended Washington State University and Eastern Washington State University, and earned a BA in Art.
Marcia moved to Seattle in 1972 and worked in jewelry trade shops in Seattle and Bellevue, Washington, apprenticing under master bench jewelers and achieving journeyman jeweler credentials in 1975.
She was a charter member of the Women’s Metal Arts Group in Seattle and the Alaska Metal Arts Guild.
In 1977 she started Gold Spells, a special order jewelry company. This eventually grew into a nationwide custom casting service for jewelry designers.
In 1997, she moved to Skagway and joined Casey McBride at Taiya River Jewelry as a designer, bench jeweler, and precious metal caster. In 2012 she and Casey McBride moved to Decorah, Iowa setting up a jewelry studio on an acreage south of town.
Though she works with 18K gold set with unusual stones and pearls, Marcia specializes in 22K gold. She is inspired by fabulous jewelry and studies her extensive collection of jewelry history books as a personal challenge to raise the level of her art. She has great respect for the craftsmanship of ancient jewelers, as their work has survived the ages. She hopes her work will do the same.