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Glass jewelry worthy of the famous Smithsonian Craft ShowIt’s an honor to present Donald Friedlich’s glass jewelry. Finding his design in the net was a nice surprise for me. I found his glass jewelry to be elegant, simple and clever. I love his clean shapes, smooth surfaces and rhythmic lines. 
What you’ll find most astonishing about his work is how he has maintained for 20+ years a career constantly increasing in success. Just one example to illustrate this: he’s the oldest exhibitor in the famous Smithsonian Craft Show. He’s had to satisfy the Show’s admissions requirements with his work every single year, how does he do that? Obviously, he will be attending again the Smithsonian Craft Show this year. Friedlich is receiving a special award in recognition of being the artist that has shown the most times. His early years in the world of jewelryHe started exhibiting since 1983 the inaugural year of the Show, just after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design.
Three years later he was honored as the school’s outstanding recent graduate. His jewelry design interests were working with black slate, precious stones, ceramic tile and, yes, glass. He tells us that back then “my inspirations included the landscapes of the American southwest, the art and architecture of Japan, the sculpture of Isamu Noguchi and paintings of Richard Diebenkorn”.
A design idea and a manufacturing challenge: glass jewelry
Friedlich has a magnificent collection of glass jewelry. Its particularity is that it plays with magnification and other optical effects. He has collaboratively worked with glassblowers to create the range of glass used in his jewelry. You can see the molds they developed which give shape to Friedlich´s jewelry
After the glass has cooled down, he starts the process of creating jewelry out of the glass forms by cutting and grinding the pieces of glass by hand. The sculpting process continues until the refined form takes the shape of a jewel he had in mind. I believe this process of creating a jewel from the piece of glass involves thinking about function and wearability.
Friedlich says that: “Both goldsmithing and glass working are demanding. I find combining the two into one cohesive design to be my ultimate challenge”.
Taking the challenge one step further: integrating glass and jewelryFriedlich´s work is not only about making jewelry with glass. He goes one step further in his design motivation.Friedlich uses glass in jewelry for the purpose of making discoveries about jewelry itself. 
In his web-site he explains this:“Much of my exploration has involved a search for qualities that are unique to jewelry as an art form. One quality that currently interests me is that brooches and necklaces are usually worn against a fabric environment. My clear glass jewelry exploits the optics of glass to heavily magnify the clothing on which it is worn so the weave of the fabric becomes the image in the jewelry, while my frosted pieces exploit the translucency of glass to exhibit a subtle color shift with the color of the clothing. I think of these pieces as “site adaptive” jewelry. This body of work bridges three craft media: it is jewelry, made of glass, with textile imagery”.
Nature is the best teacher of this amazing capacity. But I know this is off topic… Technology and the art of glass
Looking for information about Friedlich´s work I found some pictures in Philcarizzi photo series at Flickr of a workshop he preceded about glass jewelry. Browsing the pictures slideshow, I was surprised at the sheer technology that goes into each piece of jewelry. Every single glass mold is made with high tech equipment.
No wonder, he was the first jeweler to be an Artist in Residence at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass in 2003, where he developed his magnification series. The museum’s glass studio is a great place to explore glass. I’d never thought about the fluid nature of glass, a material appropriate for being converted and transformed easily. It may be melted, hardened, shattered, reheated and reborn in new guises.
Friedlich´s magnification glass jewelry also reminds me of Op Art; a brilliant artistic genre from the 1950´s and 1960´s. It was a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, giving the impression of movement, hidden images, vibrating patterns and swelling lines.
This gives structure to the relationship between form and function of jewelry that he is trying to reveal. Adding to the ornamental function of his jewlery, Friedlich plays with what jewelry can do to spark a viewer´s curiosity. The glass beads magnify the textile beneath it, there are many types of textiles, some with intricate design that could stand-out beautifully.
Hard work and talent honored with lots of awards and accomplishmentsFriedlich has been honored with numerous awards.They include a National Endowment for the Arts New England Regional Fellowship and the 2001 Renwick Gallery Acquisition Award at the Smithsonian Craft Show.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and more. His jewelry has been exhibited at numerous galleries and shows, and is frequently featured in magazines and books.
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He resolves this by designing how to make glass wearable as a brooch or a necklace. 
I love the simple and straight-forward way he has created the magnification necklaces, letting the glass beads speak for themselves, without cluttering the design.
He served a term as President of the Society of North American Goldsmiths and as Chair of the Metalsmith Magazine Editorial Advisory Committee.
