She is credited with helping pioneer the popularization of the woodturning field and the application of color in wood art.
[1] Merryll Saylan was born in 1936 in the Pelham Parkway area of The Bronx borough of New York City.
[2][3] She moved to and lived in Los Angeles in her youth, where she had an early musical education in piano and viola.
[3] She ended up attending UCLA once again, after first taking some classes at Santa Monica City College.
[4][6] The Seattle Post-Intelligencer commented that her Jelly Donut (1979) work "incorporates one segment of red resin, as if a prosthetic body part," for example.
[4] In 2018, however, Saylan put her Berkeley home up for sale and moved to Colorado to live closer to her son and grandchildren.