Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd talks with Barb Elam about women in the glass profession. Oral history interview with Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 5, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:40.

Barb Elam: And were there other women, then, in the profession around that time that you knew or were you really kind of the only one?

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd: I don’t think I knew any women per se—cause I was also—I was in and out of this area for a while. I taught at Goddard College [Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont] for a semester, and then I travelled different places. I built the first facility they had at Artpark [Artpark, Lewiston, NY], the place in upstate New York. This was all, you know, in the days that there weren’t many women doing it. So I don’t think I really, I don’t think I knew women. The thing is when I taught at Penland later—my husband and I taught together—then we had lots more women.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd discusses Paul Stankard suggesting she and Jeff Todd title their new series of works. Oral history interview with Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 5, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:23.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd (YST): I wanted to add something on our glass—a part that Paul [Stankard] had in our glass—a series of our work. We were doing these paperweight vase forms. They were lampworked or torch worked imagery. And I didn’t know Paul at that time, but when he taught the class, I insisted he come to the studio and he had years before bought a piece of mine and given it to the museum in New Jersey, the Wheaton Museum [Museum of American Glass, Wheaton Village, now WheatonArts, Millville, New Jersey]. And when they told me that somebody had bought it I said, ‘Who are they?’ and they said, ‘Paul Stankard,’ and I didn’t know who he was then—but we went to Atlantic City one year and I went to visit him. So when he got to our studio, we had just started doing these solid pieces that were upright paperweights and they were our style. And he came over and he said he liked them, he said, ‘I love your botanicals.’ And I said to him, ‘They’re not botanicals.’

Barb Elam (BE): [laughs]

YST: ‘That’s what you do.’

BE: Right.

YT: ‘They’re not our botanicals.’

BE: Right.

YST: ‘Well then what are you going to call ‘em?’ So that’s when he pushed us, and he pushed me to come up with a name. So we called that whole series the Memory series.

BE: [laughs.]

YST: And so one side would say “memories,” and they were all memories of experiences, viewings, you know, sceneries from childhood, whatever. But that was his doing.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd discusses openness in Penland. Oral history interview with Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 5, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:47.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd (YST): The nice thing about where we are here is that it’s always been real open. If people need help, they help each other. Generally, when I got involved in glass I thought it was gonna be like—I used to be a potter.

Barb Elam: Mm-hmm.

YST: I thought it was more like clay, where if you need help or you need to figure something out there’s a book that tells you how to do it. Well glass was not like that, at all. I didn’t know that when I was in grad school. It’s been so secretive forever because of things like Corning [Corning Glass Works, Corning New York] and Italy, Venice—so there wasn’t information out, and you pretty much had to figure stuff out yourself. So when I got to Penland and saw how open people were, it was really a wonderful feeling.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd talks about Paul Stankard sharing his flameworking techniques at his workshop. Oral history interview with Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 5, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:38.

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd (YST): And that’s why so many people took his class, by the way.

Barb Elam (BE): Mm-hmm.

YST: Because we went, ‘Paul’s teaching a class. We gotta see how he does that stuff.’

BE: Yeah, right. Mm-hmm.

YST: ‘How does he get those things without the air bubbles, how does he, he plops it down, how does he do it?’

BE: Right. Yeah.YST: And you know, it was pretty neat that, how open he was, and he showed people how to do it and what happens is people start trying to copy you, but they never do it like you do it. And you’re moving on, anyway. But that was, for the whole paperweight thing, that was very amazing to have him open himself up and show people what he did and how he did it.