S, SB, Sabi, Sevivon 2019

I am a Hanukkah holiday child. I was born on the Festival of Lights, the Festival of Miracles. A festival of birthdays.

I was also born on the exact date my grandfather, Willy Kerner z"l, passed away two years prior.

He passed away on 12/11/82 and I was born on 12/11/84. My name is linked to his memory - Avi (my father) Tal.

As a child, I grew up in his shadow, heard a lot about him, and some claim that many of my skills were passed down to me from him. He was an artist at heart, a creator for his home, with golden hands.

I remember that my birthday was intertwined with the memory of my grandfather; we would go to the cemetery and then celebrate my birthday.

Despite the sad memory of my grandfather, as a Hanukkah child, I remember the joy more. The joy that overcomes sadness. The holiday and my birthday illuminated the existing in our lives and the memory of our past.

One of the prominent holiday memories was the eagerness and anticipation to see what dreidel I would receive as a gift. Every year my mother would buy dreidels, made of all sorts of materials. Sometimes plastic, sometimes wood, cast lead, and more. The most beloved were the clear plastic dreidels, those that contained chocolates inside and could be opened and closed.

Since AV design studio was established, I design a dreidel every year. A small product that gets a new adaptation each time.

The dreidels and the work with them symbolize for me childhood, nostalgia, memory, play, growth, tradition, family, anticipation, and enjoyment.

This year, the dreidel talks about an old world and a new world. I designed a dreidel whose base is made of recycled Corian, of course, and the handle is made of copper or brass.

Brass and copper - traditional metal materials that were locked onto the Corian base using a traditional spinning process. Each dreidel is handmade by a metal spinner. There are few who practice this profession today, which is slowly disappearing from the world. Unfortunately, with technological development, I am not sure how many such professionals will remain in the future.

On the brass and copper, the fingerprints of the craftsman are visible. The properties of brass and copper allow for this.

As time passes, the fingerprints will be revealed more and more... To preserve the fingerprints for a long time, the dreidel handle was coated with lacquer.

Corian symbolizes the new, the material that never changes. It carries the past on its hands, glorifies it, and gives it a place of honor.

The 2019 dreidel connects me, more than ever, to my grandfather. To the memory of the past, which was and is gone, alongside the present, the now and existing.