Lavi Ben Ari was born in Israel close to the founding of the state.. His aged mother was born in “Neve Tzedek,” the first Jewish neighborhood to be built outside of the walls of Jaffa. It was built in 1887, 22 years before the founding of the city of Tel Aviv, and was included later within the new city’s limits. His late father immigrated to Israel from Europe several years before the Holocaust in which he lost his entire family. In Israel he served many years as the legal counsel to the police, and attained high-ranking positions. His wife is employed in academia, training mathematics teachers. His two sons have left the family nest years ago in order to build their adult lives.
For many years, Lavi was a senior manager of human resources and of training in Israel Aircraft Industries and in a big insurance company. Under the surface he cultivated his innate love of art and antiques, including antique lamps, which ignite the imagination and tell us much about past times. Lavi retired from his job some years ago and devoted himself to developing his artistic capabilities. The fields in which he chose to invest his artistic effort were and remain the design and creation of lamps in antique and classical styles, inspired by different design schools of days gone.
Lavi’s works have been exhibited in a long series of house exhibits, in the “Gallerina” gallery in the northern pastoral village of Bat Shlomo and in several high quality shops in Tel-Aviv and other places.
All of the lamps are built and signed by the artist himself. As they are handmade, they are uniquely designed, and in addition to being “one-of-a-kind” are at times one link in a very limited edition of few units, each of which differs slightly from the other. The lamps are made of high-quality materials only, which include brass, original antique parts imported from around the world, glass, ceramics, marble, wood, and various combinations of these materials. In addition there is a strong emphasis put on their electrical safety. The lamps represent, therefore, a combination of art, beauty and quality, and meet the customer’s expectations of a functional and decorative piece.
Lavi’s vision is to enlarge the circle of art aficionados and teach them through his work to love and appreciate the complex and warm design of the past, and to use it as the main design, or combined with modern design, in the spaces in which they live and work.
