Birds in the Hand is the collaborative jewelry line of glass artists and husband and wife, Marc Petrovic and Kari Russell-Pool. Birds in the Hand Jewelry was born as a way to turn the pieces of Marc Petrovic’s murinis that remained from his Avian sculptures into a unique jewelry line. “We challenge ourselves to limit our environmental foot print by repurposing our discards and using them as a material in their own right.”

The jewelry starts as large sheets of colored Bullseye Glass that is cut into strips and arrange layer by layer into bricks of pattern. These bricks are lightly fused together in a special oven, picked up on the end of a long solid rod, and heated and compressed to fully fuse the blocks and remove the air bubbles. Once evenly heated, the bricks are pulled into long thin rods.

Once cooled, the rods are chopped into smaller pieces known as murini. They are then arranged into a template mold and fused into a single tablet. These tablets are then cut into different shapes using strip cutters and a special glass cutting band saw.

What makes each piece so special is its finish. It is baby smooth, but not shiny, allowing the viewer to take in the intricacies and lenticular effect caused by the layering of transparent and opaque glasses.

Each finding is hand crafted from stainless steel, ensuring they remain both shiny and low maintenance. Likewise, all of the pin and pendant backs are stainless and stamped with the logo when possible. All of the ear wires remain sterling silver, requiring only the occasional buff to keep them gleaming and tarnish-free.