When any of us use wood as a building material, whether in structures or furniture, we typically do so because of its rigidity. We spend time designing our pieces and joinery in such a way as to eliminate flexure. While wood has some natural give to it, we often try to counter it.

But here's a good example of a craftsman taking a different tack: Working with wood's tendency to flex, and thereby creating a very cool mechanical feature. We've sliced this video into a sub-one-minute segment, now watch how this folding table works:

While these are totally different projects, using the sprung wood in the table reminded me of the handle mechanism on Matthias Wandel's Flip Handle Ramekin Serving Tray. You'll see him first start to devise it around 5:55 in the video, but the whole thing's worth a watch, as you get to see him design the project as he goes along: