KAN – Here and Now

It all began many years ago in a conversation I had with my mother. Bursting with excitement, she showed me the new candleholder she’d bought: a five-branch silver candelabrum. When I asked what all the excitement was about, she told me about the custom of lighting Shabbat candles in accordance with the number of people in the household. Amused by the idea, I asked her half-jokingly: “So, Mom, is that it? Have you shut up shop?”

Much later, as I worked on my design studies graduation project (on which I will elaborate in one of my next posts), that conversation with my mother was the line that guided me. When I thought about it in greater depth, it made me ponder a great deal about family connectedness and its essence.

In many respects, my KAN series is the result of these ponderings, and my understanding that my mother in fact waited many years until she bought that five-branch candelabrum. To my mind, from the moment a family is created, it begins a process of building and developing, and is constantly subject to transformation.

In my design of the series, I strove to create a new way for connecting Shabbat candles to the family, while providing freedom for the family to grow and change over time, and for the product to change with it and adapt itself to the changing circumstances.

Another important point that guided me was the importance of the similarity and difference between family members. Consequently, in the KAN series I created candleholders of different heights and a diverse variety of colors and hues. For me, family is the most important thing of all. It is the driving force behind everything I do.

I endeavored to convey all these messages in the design of this series. You won’t find an identical or uniform cluster. Each cluster is a personal and unique work of art in its own right. Just like a family.