Yaffa Todd (aka Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd)

Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd was born in Tel Aviv. After completing her BFA in Ceramics at the Philadelphia College of Art, she worked as a studio potter for two years. She began graduate school at the Rochester Institute of Technology on January, 1975, majoring in glass. During her second year at RIT, she began extensive investigation of opal glass systems, specifically fluorine opal glasses which became the subject of her Master’s thesis. During the summer of 1978, Yaffa became the second woman to teach glass at the Penland School of Crafts. They met in 1980, when Yaffa was building her studio and Jeff stopped by to see if he could help. Within a few months they were working together, a few years later they married. Since then, both she and her husband Jeff have taught glass together many times.

When Yaffa and Jeff first began working together in glass, they made goblets and perfumes. They next added lamp worked flower images to the bottles which evolved into larger glass forms as the scenes were extended to include mountains and trees. When Yaffa and Jeff were invited to a paperweight show in 1987, they were encouraged to scale down their glass forms to a paperweight format. The project became Yaffa’s “Memories” series, one of several paperweight series they have created.

Yaffa & Jeff Todd have worked together since 1980 in their Burnsville, NC studio. They exhibit nationally and internationally. Their work is included in many private and museum collections, including: LaGalerie Internationale du Verre, Biot France; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; Berstrom-Mahler Museum, Neenah, WI; C.J.S., Inc., Raleigh, NC; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; Ford Collection, Rochester, NY; Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark; Glasmuseum Frauenau, Bavaria Germany; Haaretz Museum, Tel-Aviv, Israel; Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC; Kestner Museum, Hannover, Germany; MBNA America Corporation, Newark, DE; McDonald's Corporation, Oak Brook, IL; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, NC; R.J. Reynolds Industries, Winston-Salem, NC; Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; Wheaton Museum of Historical Glass, Millville, NJ; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.

[Source: Edited from Artist's website - https://yaffajefftodd.com/biography/]