Merryll Saylan

Merryll Saylan (born 1936) is an American woodturner. She is credited with helping pioneer the popularization of the woodturning field and the application of color in wood art. She is noted as being one of the few women in the craft field, when she first began turning during the 1970s.

Early life Merryll Saylan was born in 1936 in the Pelham Parkway area of The Bronx borough of New York City. She moved to and lived in Los Angeles in her youth, where she had an early musical education in piano and viola. On her earliest works, Saylan recalled, "When I first started I had been making sculpture, but to pay my studio rent, started turning bowls. I also made turned and constructed furniture." The two, with the help of fellow artist friends, would remodel the house over the next three decades or so. During her second tenure attending UCLA for her undergraduate studies, she chose design as her major. During her time in college, she tended to her three children after classes. Additionally, her combining of materials, as well as the surface texturing in her works, helped make her pieces more unique during an era of wood art in which furniture-making was the norm and the natural look of the wood was a primary concern. She completed her M.A. in studio art at CSUN. The U.S. Department of State noted that Saylan's visit prompted attention from the Fijian media and was "covered extensively by a few national papers as well as a nationally televised channel." In 2016, Saylan was noted by the AAW to reside and continue to work in Berkeley, California. In 2018, however, Saylan put her Berkeley home up for sale and moved to Colorado to live closer to her son and grandchildren.