Reflecting on his formative influences, Berkeley-based artist and designer Rafi Ajl recalls a childhood home filled with \u201cdynamic colors and folk art, antiques, Shaker chairs, a handmade table\u2014a melting pot of design and craft.\u201d His artist mother taught him to sew at a young age, which, in addition to playing with Lego and construction toys, \u201cinformed a general approach to making and doing my whole life\u2014this idea of expressing yourself through physical things,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Post-college, the Brooklyn native moved to the Bay Area, working with a landscape design firm before entering the master in landscape architecture program at Harvard University. A year later, he returned to the Bay Area, where he began building bike frames. Ajl had previously cycled across the country, and his new career merged two passions: bikes and making. He led bike frame fabrication and design courses at California College of the Arts and ultimately became a student there himself, earning an M.F.A. in design.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Rafi Ajl\u2019s portfolio includes Post and Plane chairs, Ribs side tables, the Elaine\u2019s chair, and the Erratics furniture line.<\/p>\n
Rafi Ajl<\/p>\n
In 2017, Ajl launched the Long Confidence, a studio in Berkeley that specializes in handmade furniture and home goods. Today, his practice also encompasses designs bearing his name that are \u201cmore artistic and collectible,\u201d he says. While his efforts originally focused on wood, he has expanded to glass, brass, and aluminum, often combining various materials and processes. Erratics, a Rafi Ajl furniture series, includes what he describes as \u201csculptural perches,\u201d comprising wood, sisal, and cast brass (all the metal casting is done in-house).\u00a0<\/p>\n
For his glassware, he works with a local glassblower. Over time, Ajl\u2019s experience with the material led to creating bigger pieces such as one-of-a-kind tables with 18-inch glass bases and metal or wood tops, available through the Future Perfect in San Francisco. He is currently developing larger-scale glass forms for dining and console tables that will debut in a solo show in June 2026. \u201cI\u2019m really driven by process, curiosity, and experimentation,\u201d Ajl says of his ever-evolving practice. \u201cI do a ton of sketching, but I love to just start building\u2014getting things into my hands as soon as I can.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reflecting on his formative influences, Berkeley-based artist and designer Rafi Ajl recalls a childhood home filled with \u201cdynamic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[764,33706,2404,33707,143,145,144,33705],"class_list":["post-53519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley","tag-designer","tag-furniture","tag-home-goods","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-rafi-ajl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}