iRevival

Happy Spring!

‏It's been a while since I last wrote you from Tel Aviv.
‏Since then I managed to make a significant career change. I closed the store most of you know in Neve Tzedek, and now I am working on and selling my creations in my studio on 23 Abulafia St., Tel Aviv.

My new studio on Abulafia St., Tel Aviv

‏Like I wrote a few times in the past in this blog, I feel fortunate to have the career that I do. I really love and passionate and am about what I do. Nevertheless, after almost fifteen years of being committed to a store with stocked shelves, I felt it was time for a change. I recently decided to put the focus not on tabletop but on larger scale objects that challenge me more professionally and artistically.
‏When I opened my first store in Neve Tzedek in 1997 it was the result of good foresight. Back then, the area was neglected and remote, very different from today's reality. My move to the new studio comes from the same alertness for developing urban areas I have. It's not Jaffa, it's not Florentine either, it's SOSA. Why SOSA? Because we are South Of SAlame St. cute, isn't it?
‏Some of my American clients who came to visit the studio were very excited about the neighborhood. It reminded them the early days of the Meat Packing District in NY (minus the smell).
‏At the bottom of this post you can find a partial list of the artists, photographers and designers that work here. If you want a peek at the forefront the Israeli art and design scene, come and see it where it is happening now. There’s very little information about the area online, there aren't any big chains and the Israeli media are just starting to discover the neighborhood.

I heart SoSa

My new work (and living) environment is full of young, creative people -- people who chose to live and create among garages, upholsterers and welders. The encounter with a wide range of designers, artists and musicians has added a new vision and depth to my creativity.
‏I will still be very happy, of course, to continue to design tabletop sets for clients, and will give all of my attention to choosing the exact shapes and color combinations to any order, but my main focus now is on bigger projects, art exhibitions and site-specific works.
‏The decision to make changes in my career also arose from my desire to go back to my original profession – interior design. Even though my degree is in interior design, life drove to me to ceramics. Now, I decided to take the wheel and drive it back to a bit different track. My first interior design project was the loft I live in (one floor above the studio – such a comfortable lifestyle that it's addictive). As you may see in the pictures, just as I am not afraid of colorful tableware – colorful walls make me even happier (this is just a preview, will show more details soon).

photography: Avishay Finkelstein

‏This Passover, more than being a symbol of Spring, it also symbolizes my choosing a new path. A path that I am sure would take me to interesting, challenging and rewarding places.
‏The next time you are in Tel Aviv, I will be happy to have you visit my studio. Like all other artists in the area, I am here most of the day but it is much safer to call before coming to make sure I am in, and available.

‏I wish us all a very happy Spring!



Partial list of the SoSa artists, photographers and designers:



Art

SAMY D. - yours truly
23 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.3.516.4968
Sun-Thr 11 AM to 7 PM

Keren Ella Gefen – artist
23 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.54.558.8285
www.kerengefen.com
By appointment

Kfir Ziv – Photographer
3 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.3.654.1414
www.kfirziv.com
Weekdays 9 AM to 6 PM or by appointment

Miri Hoffman-Kassif – artist
20 Alfasi St.
Tel. +972.50.555.4106
www.hoffman-kassif.com
Weekdays 9 AM to 6 PM or by appointment

Dan Gallery for Contemporary Art
15 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.3.518.8559
www.dangallery.co.il
Mon-Thr 11 AM to 6:30 PM
Friday 11 AM to 2 PM


Contemporary Gallery
117 Herzel St.
Tel. +972.3.682.2777
www.contemporary.co.il
Sunday by appointment only
Mon-Thu 11 AM to 9 PM
Fri 10 AM to 2 PM
Sat 11 AM to 2 PM


121 Gallery
121 Herzel St.
Tue-Fri 11 AM to 3 PM


Nimrod Reuveni - artist
3 Moshe Maor St.

Liora Kanterewicz – artist
25 Abulafia St.
Tal. +972.54.458.8288
www.liorakstudio.com
By appointment

Eli Diner - artist
25 Abulafia St.
www.elidiner.com
By appointment

Bezalel Artists – MFA program
6 Abulafia St., 2nd floor
60 Salame S., 3rd floor


Design
Kastiel – Furniture and Accessories
36 Alfasi St.
Tel. +972.3.6836334
www.kastiel.com

Skalski – Leather Boutique
19 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.3.683.4505
www.skalskidesign.com
Weekdays 9 AM to 6 PM or by appointment

Verner – fashion and home accessories
33 Alfasi St.
Tel. +972.3.5186681
www.verner.co.il
Weekdays 10 AM to 7 PM
Friday 10 AM to 3 PM

Rotem & Hadas – fashion
23 Abulafia St.

Michal Teharlev – weaving artist
20 Alfasi St.
Tel. +972.54.550.5106
www.michaltaharlev.com
By appointment

Minima – made to measure fashion
22 Abulafia St.
Tel. +972.3.544.3554
By appointment


B.Knit – bedding, blankets and closes  
34 Ben-Atar St.
Tel. +972.3.518.1138
www.bknit.com
Weekdays 10 AM to 5 PM
Friday 10 AM to 1 PM

Iris Erlich - fashion and home accessories
18 Ben Atar St.
Tel. +972.3.6810732
Weekdays 11 AM to 6 PM or by appointment

Press Relese

PRESS RELEASE

Samy David Cohen, the internationally celebrated Tel Aviv-based ceramic artist, recently concluded a five-year legal battle to reclaim sole ownership of designer goods that L’Objet, LLC, a United States designer, had promoted and sold as its own.

Mr. Cohen’s works have been the subject of major retrospectives in galleries and museums around the world, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and have been honored in many prestigious competitions, most recently having been awarded first prize in the Alix de Rothschild Crafts Awards by a London-based jury.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered its September 30, 2011 judgment enjoining L’Objet from attempting to appropriate these works of art in the future. The District Court also awarded Mr. Cohen and his company, Samy D. Ltd., six-figure damages for L’Objet’s past appropriations.

The litigation arose from distribution and trademark agreements that L’Objet had solicited in 2002 in order to become Samy D.’s sole United States distributor. After disagreements arose between the parties to the agreements, arbitration was commenced before the International Center for Dispute Resolution in New York.

In the course of the arbitration, Mr. Cohen discovered that L’Objet was creating, marketing and selling Samy D.’s copyrighted and trademarked designs through various retailers as if L’Objet had designed them and owned all rights to the proceeds from them. The arbitrator ordered L’Objet to pay Samy D. Ltd. and Mr. Cohen damages for its fraudulent usurpation of Mr. Cohen’s designs and enjoined L’Objet from “the display, advertising, offering for sale, and sale of any design having as its author Samy David Cohen.”

L’Objet attempted to set the arbitrator’s award aside by filing a petition in New York City’s federal court. The District Court summarily dismissed L’Objet’s petition and confirmed the arbitrator’s award in its entirety, including the permanent injunction.

Elad Yifrach founded a company called L'objet LLC.

In 2003, a person named Elad Ifrach originally Israeli born, copied and stole my ENTIRE collection, claimed to be its designer and reproduced handmade, one-of-a-kind objects mass market. On the basis of this he founded a company called "L'Objet LLC" in the US.

 
In 2005, I sued him in the AAA (American Arbitration Association), few months ago I won the arbitration. Mr. Ifrach in the name of his company appealed in the federal court of law and lost again on March 9 2011.

JUSTICE HAS NOT BEEN SERVED YET!!!

Dear friends and colleagues, especially those of you living in the US, there are MANY companies and sites for luxury home goods online. Please choose to support companies other than "L'Objet". Businesses should maintain high moral standards.

Samy D. at the Ritz Carlton

An Israeli artist working in Tel Aviv, a curator based in London and an interior designer from Tokyo – these combined resulting in my sending a series of ceramic pieces I designed to Hong Kong for the Ritz Carlton hotel a few weeks ago.

I am always ambivalent about finishing a project. On one hand, there is no greater satisfaction than to see new works being packed and shipped. On the other hand, the same exact situation brings with it a melancholy feeling, like a deflated balloon when the party is over. After the last carrier left the studio with the last wooden box I found myself wandering about in the studio, unable to bring myself to work. I stopped, dimmed the lights and laid back on the studio's sofa. I had some magical afternoon hours, with a diagonal light illuminating a clean desk.

the first mock-up i sent to the interior designer in Tokyo

different kinds of gold samples

Those kinds of projects occupy me for way far more time than what is actually spent in the studio, physically working on them. This project challenged me in two aspects: the large scale dimensions of the objects and the global nature of the work process with the client being both in London and Tokyo. The professional relationship we established was full of mutual respect, I valued their overall point of view on the whole project and they respected my artistic point of view. They knew exactly what they wanted and yet they never told me "do such and such", they were interested in my own interpretation.
    Even before the hotel opened, it already won several prices and got the highest rating of the chain's hotels (73 hotels and resorts in 24 countries). For general knowledge – the first Ritz hotel was established in Place Vendome in Paris in 1898 by the celebrated Swiss hotelier César Ritz. Even in his own lifetime he became a symbol – the king of hoteliers and the hotelier of kings. With the passing years the Ritz hotels became an international standard of luxury, style and most of all– impeccable service. Each waiter has a full suit for the daytime and a totally different suit for the evenings; chambermaids have white ties or pure white aprons, the hotels have gourmet restaurants of the highest quality and an exclusive décor.

The Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong - the highest hotel in the world

I designed a series of objects for the public area of the hotel, for its private dining area and for the hotel's bar. The objects are made out of rough ceramic clay. It is very complicated working with this clay, especially on the potter's wheel as I did with most of them. I don't want to get too graphic; I'll just say that after working on each of these objects I needed to heal from the "ultra-extra-deep peeling" the skin on my hands went through.

The vessels I made for the Ritz are the largest I have ever made. What limits the size of ceramic works is usually the kiln's size. It is not that I bought a new kiln for those works, but I made an extreme effort to maximize the potential of my existing kiln. I built inner constructions which supported the vessels and enable me to burn it in next-to-impossible angles.

The final result, as you can see in the pictures, is a series of objects with a rough finish and torn-like edges. Some of the objects were painted in black (on the exterior) and got the look and texture of basalt rock. If you add to it the gold and platinum explosions on the interior side of the works, you get an imagery of a volcano eruption. This is the origin of the serie's name – Volcano.

Diameter 84 cm, Height 76 cm

Diameter 83 cm, Height 23 cm

Diameter 65 cm, Height 65 cm

Diameter 84 cm, Height 76 cm

So the next time you go to Hong Kong, please stop by, go to the 102nd floor and have a glass of champagne, poured from a bottle resting in my own creation of a “champagne bowl”. Salute!

 images of the new SAMY D. Volcano series 
form the Ritz Carlton hotel in Hong Kong

Farewell from Jaffa

A window with a blooming lavender planter and view to the Mediterranean Sea, a muezzin's cry and the smell of home cooking. A picturesque view, arched windows and the oldest port in this part of the Mediterranean basin. More than a month ago we took leave of all that.

Jaffa view

After more than three years in which Yohai and I, with two cats and a dog, lived in Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood, it was time to move on. We wrapped wine glassed with old newspapers, piled boxes atop each other, sat on suitcases to close them and headed to our new home in 'Qiriyat Hamelacha' (the 'handicrafts campus') a neighborhood in south Tel Aviv.

The farewell from Jaffa was full of mixed fillings. On one hand – there was no doubt we would miss the pastoral ambiance and the unique atmosphere of Jaffa. On the other hand – the physical distance from Tel Aviv and the different social codes came to be a bit tiring. Tel Aviv-Jaffa (the official name of the metropolitan municipality) joins two cities with one little hyphen. This metaphoric hyphen embodies so many differences, contradiction and gaps, in so many aspects of life, all at the same time, and it is exactly what makes Tel Aviv-Jaffa such a fascinating place. The return to the Tel Avivian side of the hyphen surprised us both in its intensity. The ability to leave home together in the morning and say goodbye with a kiss and the distance to everywhere which became significantly shorter feel more right for us now.

Jaffa was truly our home for a few years. After we acclimated to the neighborhood, and after the neighborhood acclimated to us, Jaffa showed us its beautiful side (most of the time, Ramadan aside, than the all rules change). I enjoyed immensely the walks with the dog on Saturday mornings all the way to the new park by Jaffa's beach. I used to stop over at the local bakery, picking up some fresh baked Pitas seasoned with some local olive oil and hyssop.

For those of you who know Jaffa, for those who enjoy reading about different places, and for those who plan a trip to Tel Aviv-Jaffa and want some local information that would not be written in your travel guide, I wrote the list that follows. I divided the list into four different areas of town: Ajami - center and south, northern Ajami and the old port, flea market area, and Old Jaffa. I tried to make this list the most personal; I'll leave the tourists places for the tour guides and invite you to my Jaffa.


View Samy D.'s Jaffa in a larger map

Ajami - Center and South

Falafel on Saturday morning – right across the corner from where we used to live there are 2 families making homemade Falafel on Saturday mornings (one on Emmunim St., the other on Even-Sinna St. you can just follow the smell, it's delicious). Fresh pita, sliced tomato and falafel balls (more of a patty than the usual ball) full of flavor. The good life, the good life in a pita.

Um- Ali – the neighborhood's greengrocer, a lovely and tolerant lady. Aside from pears, tomatoes and any other familiar vegetables she has many herbs and roots that I did not know even exist. Some would say that her pricing is correlated to the car you park on the curve in front, some would say that the brown part of the banana is not rotten but 'Baladi' (the local version of organic), but there is no one like Um-Ali when it comes to choosing the best watermelon or for the best olives (she sells them by the cashier).

typical Ajami street corner

Stuffed Grape leaves – Jaffa for the advanced. Personally, I know those of Noel (from Kedem St.) but she is not the only one. You give her an empty pot in any size and color and two days later you get it back full of grape leaves stuffed with rice rolled perfectly, with an accuracy of a Buddhist monk on Ritalin.

Hamidron Park (“the slope park”) – it is true that once it was a  neighborhood, it is true that in the 80's the place turned to be a construction waste site, it is also true that the development of the park was accelerated when many Israeli Jews moved to Jaffa – but the bottom line is that it is very very beautiful.
I followed the different stages of the new park's development. In the beginning, the hills of construction waste were made out of colorful tiles, ceramic electric fuses and even everyday's household items which cried out the story of the obliterated neighborhood. The time passing, the salty air and giant grinding machines transformed the broken pieces of life to high hills of sand and gravel. From one weekend to another the hills moved and slid to their final position of curvaceous slopes having an abundance of intimate hideaways and vast public spaces. There is even one spot in which Tel Aviv from one side and Bat-Yam on the other are hidden from the eye and all one can see is more than 180 degrees of blue touching blue.

The new park by Jaffa's beach

Derech-Hagouf – in a small turn from Kedem St. (3 Menuha St.) you can find the Jaffa-chic wellness center Derech-Haguf. Once in a few months I go there for an Ayurvedic massage from one of the best - Marian Schwaitzer. After the treatment you can sit on the small terrace facing the sea and drink cold tamarind juice. On my last birthday, a few weeks ago, I put my back muscles to Marian's practiced hands – so he could dismantle me gently.

‏

Northern Ajami and the old port

Fried Calamari – Misedet Hadayagim (“The Fishermen's Restaurant). Located on a prime location, at the very end of the Jaffa port. Except for a quick visit to the bathroom, it never crossed my mind to sit inside the restaurant and not outside on the water front. It also never crossed my mind to order anything other than a huge pile of fried Calamari and a pint of beer. Fresh calamari, full of frying oil that tastes like heaven.

Cookies in the window – on the end of Hatzedef St. (one of the most beautiful streets) there is a house with a little window facing the street. From the little window you can smell from a distance the home baking of sweet and salty cookies. I must admit I had never actually bought some, I bake my own at home or buying at Margoza (read about in the next section of town), but it makes a lovely and romantic stop when touring Jaffa.

The window in action

Abu Hassan Humus – Personally, I am not a huge humus fan, but I know people who speak about their favorite humus with a loving gaze in their eyes and with an almost religious conviction that their favorite humus joint is the best in town. Abu Hassan in Hadolfin St. is one of the best known humus restaurants in Tel Aviv. I used to go by there on my way to work. 8:30 AM – I am just starting my day and people already standing in line for their morning Humus with boiled egg. To be honest – way too much for me.

Humus lovers take their humus outside

Dvir Gallery – every few months, in Hangar no. 2 in the old Jaffa port, there is an interesting art exhibition at Dvir Gallery (a branch of Dvir Gallery from Tel Aviv). Those days there is a simple and fascinating exhibition titled Lichtkeile by Miroslaw Balka. Twirled Perspex slabs hanging from the ceiling and making magic with the sun light. So simple yet so hypnotizing.

“Shuk Hapishpishim” Flea Market Area

Margoza – At any given period of time, I have my preferred local café where I stop on my way to the studio for coffee and croissant or a sandwich. It changes each time my way from home to the studio changes. While I was walking from home in Jaffa to the studio in Abulafia St. (the current location), each morning, may it be cold outside or deadly hot, I had my coffee in the small and lovely Margoza bakery (24 Margoza St.). The place is opened by the husband and wife team of Michal and Tzafrir Dahan.

One of the best things to have there is a small wonder named chouquettes We are talking about a small, thin crusted cream puff, garnished with sugar crystals and filled with fresh air from the Alps (not really). 20 chouquettes in a Cellophane bag tied with a ribbon and the world looks much better. Beyond that the different breads are great, the baguettes are authentic and the dried fruit cake is exceptional, a weekend without it is not quite a weekend.

Lauri Recanati's studio – almost a year ago I wrote about the mosaic artist and dear friend Lauri Recanati. Her studio in Rabi Hanina St. is one of the more magical places in the neighborhood. What was a pickles factory (!) over 300 years ago became, under Lauri's sophisticated and loving hand, the local branch of heaven. A charming studio with romantic yard, mosaic art works and giant bins full of colorful raw materials in any color and texture you can imagine.
Visit by appointment, find out the details in her website.
12 Rabi Hanina St. Jaffa

Lauri Recanati in her fabulous Jaffa studio

Fresh baked bread from Charcuterie bar – many know by now the Charcuterie restaurant. Less know about the bar down the same street as the main restaurant, even less know about the wonders of the bread they bake there.  If you ask hard enough they will even sell you a loaf to go. Extra hard crust and soft and airy on the inside. There is only one problem with it; by the time you get back home half of it is gone.
3 Rabi Hanina St. Jaffa


The Old city

The old city's area was the center of town for centuries. It was badly damaged when Napoleon conquered it and was rebuilt in the early 19th century. The last renovations were done by four Israeli leading architects in the early1960's (Yaacov Saar, Seadia Mendel, Yona Pitelson and Eliezer Frenkel). The best way to experience the old city is just wandering the magical little streets named after the zodiac signs. Usually when I wander the streets of old Jaffa I try to imagine future times when the area might be vibrant again. The try to make it an artist's district did not really catch up, but I believe in the great potential of the place and sure that one day it would be alive.
When you take the tour in Old Jaffa, do not miss the Ilana Goor museum.

Ilana Goor Museum - located in the property with the most beautiful view in all of Jaffa. It is a life project of very appreciated and loved woman. Ilana Gur is a controversial image that creates, collects and exhibits the art she loves. I hope to write a post about her soon.

Hope you enjoyed the ride in the streets of my Jaffa. If you have any nice experiences or special site you want to share, please leave a comment. And next time you're in town – don't be a stranger.