Creativity Expressed
by Suzanne Daub
The creative energy of Don Freedman is evident everywhere you look in his new shop at 14 Centre Street. You can see it in the beautiful ornate bowls, in the brass sculpture and wood carvings, masks, decorative mirrors, and the many clocks of all shapes, sizes, and designs.
For 25 years his shop on Old South Wharf was filled floor to ceiling with unusual collectibles and decorative items. Now that he’s moved to larger digs at 14 Centre Street, there is room for an even wider variety of all his wonderful designs as well as for some larger pieces that his shop on the wharf could not accommodate. Freedman’s new iron deck tables with matching stools have been very well received and patrons love the new hanging metal sculptures and the candelabras. His products range from whimsical to practical, from traditional to contemporary, from cute to sophisticated, and they’re priced at all levels.
Expressions of Don Freedman is one of the island’s most delightful and unusual stores for unique home accessories and gifts.
Freedman got his start when, after graduating with a degree in industrial engineering, he realized that was not the direction he wanted his life to go. After a stint in the Coast Guard, he traveled around the United States selling artifical trees. He saw the many possibilities of using decorative arts to enhance homes and offices, and he began to design metal sculpture himself. Once he tapped into the creativity within, his ideas never stopped flowing.
He began winning awards for his sculpture and being written up in well-known design magazines. It was when he started his own company to produce his designs and sell them to major, upscale department stores and interior designers that Freedman started to travel. He discovered that he could utilize the skills of village craftspeople in Thailand, India, and Indonesia to execute his designs. And he discovered that during his travels his creativity blossomed even more. “I’d find myself in a hotel somewhere and see something that the local people did... that would give me ideas and I’d find the craftspeople to make them,” he explained.
At times he’d find a product that the local people made, change the design and the manner of construction to suit the tastes of his clientele, and a new product would be introduced. Freedman’s beautiful bone and horn bowl design is a perfect example: “they’re hand cut from camel bone and buffalo horn, soaked in henna...and some are soaked in vegetable dye...then pieced together...it takes fourteen weeks.”
For decades, Freedman traveled overseas three times a year. It was exhilarating and it was exhausting. Finally, “I came in one day and hated it,” he explained. He missed the personal relationships with customers, and he decided to sell his company and put his considerable energies into his own shop and on expanding his designs. “I’m a recovered workaholic,” he joked. “this is a great way to be semi-retired...I enjoy what I’m doing so much!” It’s no surprise that one of his favorite pieces in the shop is a clock that says “There’s no better time than now.”
Freedman and his wife Jere now travel to meet with their craftspeople just once a year, and have made Nantucket Island their home base. They manage to fit in walks at Tuppancy Links with their dogs, some gardening, and a golf game here and there. According to Jere, Don is still constantly designing and sketching: “On planes, on roadtrips, sometimes when we go out to dinner he’ll say to me “Got a pen?’” Even at an age when most fully retire, Freedman’s impressive creative energy has not flagged. The ideas “dart out,” he explained, “it’s an energy that needs to be expressed.”
Freedman has already expanded his gift and decor lines to include glass sculpture, and he’s planning larger and more dramatic designs to introduce next season.
Expressions of Don Freedman is open daily at 14 Centre Street.
