Arts

These aren't your bubbe’s menorahs.

“When I started 35 years ago, there was just no such thing as contemporary Jewish art,” Rosenthal explains while leading me on a tour of his Kensington studio. “So I told myself, ‘I'll create Jewish art, but also a true piece of art.’”

Today, the effort, which Rosenthal summarizes as “contemporary style rooted in tradition,” has bloomed into a thriving business. Located in the Howard Avenue Antiques District, his studio is a two-floor operation where a dozen or so artisans buzz in a flurry of design, glass cutting, and welding.

Chanukah is a busy time for the crew, but they work throughout the year, designing pieces for weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, and other Jewish occasions. In addition to menorahs, the collection includes dreidels, mezuzot, bookends, and picture frames, which are shipped to galleries, shops, and museums around the world, from Cuba to Australia.

Rosenthal's name has become synonymous with the art of Judaica, and his pieces have been offered for sale at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and the Kennedy Center, among others.

But the artist got his start in an unusual way: by fixing stoves. As a teen, Rosenthal helped his father with his stove-repair business. From the first moment he used a blowtorch to weld grates together, he was committed to metalwork. It took him several years to perfect his craft; when his Judaica business took off, he began teaching others.

“I brought them in and trained them, and now they're better than me,” he chuckles. “What we've done is conglomerated. We have the best artists in any number of crafts under one roof.”

In a design area of his studio, a young woman pieces together shards of candy-like glass. Another pulls molds of sun-catchers from a machine the size of a printer. The sun-catchers are commissioned for a project at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

As we pass each station, Rosenthal explains the process. Every menorah, for example, starts as a prototype. Once he gives design approval, metal artists finesse copper, brass, and steel into what Rosenthal calls the base of each piece.

Meanwhile, in the glass room, artists fit together shards of glass and then fire them in a kiln. After cutting the finished pieces into ornate shapes, they fit them together like mosaics, lay a sheet of glass on top, and bake them again. Once finished, the craftsmen use silkscreen to emboss 24-carat-gold Hebrew letters or other designs onto the glass. The final step is fusing the glass to its metal base.

A wall of stock items holds the completed pieces. Most menorahs range from 70 to several hundred dollars. A portion of sales from certain collections will go to a number of charities Rosenthal supports, from breast cancer research to Holocaust education.

My tour ends upstairs in Rosenthal's “art incubator,” the focal point of his community-outreach efforts. With its hardwood floors and mounted artwork, the room looks like a museum.

“This is where we play jazz,” he says.

And just as I'm thinking that he's effectively tackled yet another form of art, he clarifies that the incubator is a venue for others—including local musicians—to display their pieces or perform. It's one example of the good Rosenthal strives to achieve through his work.

“We think of art as a way to make a living,” he explains. “But it's also a way to make the world a better place.”

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For more information on Gary Rosenthal’s Judaica, visit www.collectgaryrosenthal.com.