DC Ringz Is a Trail Glazier, Making Custom Rings Out of Glass That Other Artists Said Would Never Work

Dijenaire Crijuan Frazier may have already begun searching out some transformational epiphany when pestered into touring an old pal’s new worksite at Bullseye Glass. But he certainly never expected his next decade would be forged in the fires of Southeast Portland’s internationally renowned art glass pioneers. The budding entrepreneur behind DC Ringz hadn’t any artistic background or prior experience manipulating molten elements, but Frazier had spent a lifetime hunting down something like Bullseye’s signature Space Age stained-glass fusion for one simple reason: “My pinkie’s really small—size 3,” he laughs. “I always wanted a pinkie ring but could never find one that fit, so I started casting glass forms the same way they do metal.”

That first effort, a beveled black ring with red streaks and spiral effects resembling wood grain, drew sufficient praise for Frazier to launch DC Ringz despite the barrage of stones thrown from fellow glaziers convinced his designs wouldn’t maintain structural integrity.

“They kept telling me glass doesn’t like that shape,’” he recalls. “Someone says I can’t do something, my mindset’s always to keep pushing and pushing. There’s a whole science behind making these rings strong enough to be worn every day. No one really knows what this glass can do.”

To that end, Frazier has been steadily testing the ceiling of his glassware. He’s currently expanding the company’s prospective clientele from vendor markets and community fairs to storefronts and galleries, while a more streamlined process and substantial capital investment in machinery has lowered the production time for each ring from nearly 90 minutes to less than 10.

Alongside newly feasible custom requests—one woman has asked for a ring that doubles as a cigar cutter—he’s also begun experimenting with a line of pendants and approached area night spots about glass bar tops featuring the establishment’s logo lit from below.

“For an art form in this world to be so new,” he marvels, “it grabbed my attention. I fell in love with the endless possibilities, and I gave nine years of my life learning how to make something truly mine from sand and ash and whatever mineral adds the color. It’s just playing with the earth, but I’m creating jewelry.”