A few years ago my friend Robin gave me three wood & cast iron legs which used to be part of her grandmother's piano stool. Robin said to me: "Yoav, you make great things from found objects, maybe you'll find some use for these legs". A few years passed and Robin and her boyfriend, Chris, got married. So I said to myself, this is a great opportunity to make something out of these legs. It took me more time – much more time than the customary one year grace-period one has to give a wedding gift, but I am after all an artist, and as you all know, an artist's time can be stretched..

The legs wood finish was all ruined; the cast iron ball and claw feet were rusted; the balls themselves were chipped or broken... so I decided to take a drastic measure: to sand-blast them and get rid of many of these inflictions. Then came the question of what to do with the open mortises that used to house the original (and missing) rails, and of course – what am I going to do with the legs?

The answer came in the shape of a broken glass lid that embraced a round walnut plate. I found these items on one of the shelves in the Artist-in-Resident space at Purchase.

Can Facebook be a design tool?.... well it depends... 

Recently I needed to decide on the most interesting board orientation for the table top I was building in Purchase College. I had five or six heart-pine boards that I salvaged, and could not make up my mind as to what should be the best way to connect them together in order to make an attractive looking tabletop.

So, I decided to bring this up with my facebook friends. I posted three images of the different configurations (I was contemplating with) and ask my fellow facebookers to grade them: form the most attractive to the least attractive.  A few of my friends added the reasoning behind their decision, others just cast their ballot.

Here are the images:

At the end of the day I took all my friends views into consideration, processed them and made a new (fourth) composition that included book-matching symmetry and which called for all eyes to be placed on one side of the table top.

Among my students last semester was one of the worlds best turners, and arguably the best turning teacher I have met. During this term Andy was more my teacher than my student. Before meeting Andy I thought I knew how to turn; now I know that I was merely a beginner. Andy teaches a turning class in Purchase College and everybody can join this class, not just Purchase students. He is a gifted teacher and his techniques work every single time. He is also a writer on Wood-turning and has contributed many articles in the field.

Andy's idea for the Lamp Assignment  was a light brush. He turned a brush body and mounted it with an LED light cupolaed with some light transmuting thin plastic hairs – to carry the light wave down from the LED source to the brush tips. Andy is going to embark on a more ambitious task, and harness this method for building a furniture..

Andy's Brush:

Andy splitting a Cherry slab for a turning project:

While at Purchase College I taught a class labeled "Applied Design". What we did was to go through a ratcheted-up four assignment curricular that culminated in designing and building a full-scale functional piece of furniture. The third, and very interesting assignment, was to build a lamp. I wrote about Robert's lamp before and now I wanted to show you another lamp built by Doug Watters. Doug is a professional furniture maker who took my class to hone his design skills. He is a gifted turner and the lamp he built demonstrates this perfectly.

The base was turned separately form the yolk. The arm is laminated oak. To set its' angle you need to pull or loosen a leather strap that is secured to the base with a  wrapped-around maritime cleat made from bronze.