Translated from French cloisonn�© means “small windows.” But to Rio Rico artist Linda Crawford the ancient art of cloisonn�© is more than just the small windows of melted powdered glass she so expertly adds to her hand-built silver jewelry. Cloisonn�©, according to Crawford, are the windows to her soul.

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“It’s all about my creative expression,” said Crawford. “It’s all about what comes from inside of me. I don’t sit around and wonder what I should do next. It usually comes to me in a flash.”

A nationally recognized artist and teacher of cloisonn�© enameling Crawford has been perfecting her style and techniques for more than 20 years. She became interested in the enameling while doing research on the art of the Celts for a college paper, but it was a number of years before it finally became her sole focus.

In college she dabbled in all the art classes, fell in love with Raku pottery, played guitar with a passion, and eventually found her niche with jewelry making, she said. Once she discovered cloisonn�© and began to incorporate it into her hand-fabricated jewelry “everything else was put on the back burner,” she said. In the 1980’s she quit her full-time job working for the California Department of Social Services to become a full-time artist.

Today, Crawford’s jewelry is a soulful mix of abstract art and realism. Her cloisonn�© designs are playfully elegant, joyfully moody and dance with bright colors and often whimsical themes. There are maidens floating in a sea of translucent color; angels representing charity, hope, faith and love; bold windows of bright color; and images transformed from the artist's soul. Some of her work looks as though it might have been unearthed from an ancient tomb. Some is modern and glitters with the flavor of our times.

“I have sketch books after sketch books and piles of receipts I have drawn sketches of ideas on over the years but, truthfully, I’m usually just drawn to bring an idea that's still inside me into fruitions and there is no turning back,” explained Crawford. “Sometimes I don’t even know the meaning of something when I am doing it. I’ll look at something and say, did I do that? I wake up in the morning and it just flows. I’m not the director. If I try to force it there usually becomes problem with the piece. If I stay true to the vision it just flows.”

Crawford begins each piece by cutting out a shape from a sheet of 20 to 24-gauge fine silver with a jeweler’s saw. The shape is then slightly domed with a hammer, roughed up with a diamond bit, separated into cloisonn�© windows using fine ribbons of silver or gold.

And then, Crawford said, the fun begins.

Applying as many as 30 layers of the fine powdered glass with a sable brush Crawford builds up the color layer by layer. In between each layer the piece is heat to the glass melting point, about in a small kiln for two to three minutes. Subtle changes in the piece happen as she changes hues and shades of the layers of transparent and semi-transparent powdered glasses, she said. Sometimes silver or gold leaf is added to a layer. Once the enameling reaches the top of the cloisonn�© window the piece is ground and polished and set into its pre-constructed fine jewelry finding.

“The whole process (of cloisonn�©) is very magical to me,” said Crawford. “When you apply this substance that looks like granulated sugar and put it in a 1,475-degree oven and heat it and it transforms into shiny colored glass, it’s amazing.”

Watching Crawford create in her home studio you can sense her passion and love for what she does. Her eyes dance with excitement and smiles flash as he explains her art. She designs and fabricates all of her own setting for her cloisonn�© pieces. Many of the elaborate silver and gold pins, pendants and bracelets incorporate precious gems, found objects, gold baubles and minerals into the designs. She and her husband, Tom Williams, are avid rock hounds and love scouring the Arizona hillsides for minerals and gemstones they bring home for cutting and polishing. The stones are sold on their Web site and at farmer’s markets in Green Valley and Bisbee, or added to Crawford’s jewelry. A backyard gazebo was converted into a lapidary shop with all the tools needed to shape their found treasures.

Crawford said she has “turned down the volume” on her career the past few years. She was once featured on a Home and Garden Network television show, sold her cloisonn�© jewelry in galleries across the United States, taught dozens of highly sought after workshops each year and was showcased in a book on cloisonn�©, she said. She now prefers the home life in the Rio Rico hills.

Enameling, melting finely crushed glass powders onto metals, has been around for hundreds of years, according to Crawford. The earliest known enameled articles are six gold rings dating from the 13th century that were found in a king’s tomb in Cyprus, she said. Later religious works were enameled during the Byzantine (Roman) Empire and the technique spread along the Silk Road to China. During the 15th century, artisans in France perfected the technique of painting on the glass powders and coined the phrase cloisonn�©, referring to the tiny wires that separate the enamel colors into their windows. In the 19th century, Faberge’ captured the world’s attention when they began making cloisonn�© eggs, combining jewels with enameling.

“My jewelry is the translation of an inner vision into an outer reality,” said Crawford. “They are an exploration of patterns, colors and textures magically transformed into wearable art.”