Philadelphia furniture maker Michael Hurwitz was poking around a flea market in New Jersey one day when he found, sticking out of a pile of assorted junk, a few pieces of exquisite antique latticework with a pattern of overlapping circles. Hurwitz, whose wife is Japanese, recognized them as kumiko, the sort of lacy wooden screens he’d seen over doorways and in lanterns in Japan. As he handled the screens, he wondered how Japanese craftsmen might have made them a century or more ago. Soon afterward, commissioned to build a piece of furniture to display a collection of family photographs, Hurwitz designed this cabinet, made of pau amarillo with kumiko-style grillwork. To make the door, Hurwitz’s assistant, Atsushi Hanano, began by creating long, narrow workpieces shaped like a row of pointed ellipses connected end to end—strings of sausage, Hurwitz calls them. Then he half-lapped these together on the diagonal to form the screen. To see the strings of ellipses clearly, view this photo from the bottom-right corner and at a low angle. Designing the grillwork was considerably easier than making it. It took Hanano more than 20 weeks to complete the door.

To learn more about how Atsushi Hanano made the grillwork for this cabinet see Grilled to Perfection.

Photo: John Carlano