So I got bored and it was a bit too cold to work in the shop so I grabbed a few things and came inside and watched some YouTube videos on how to do Kumiko.
As near as I can translate it, Kumiko means “Real Pain In The Ass”.
In all seriousness though, it’s a very old Asian method for creating decorative panels used for all kinds of things like Shoji lamps, windows, sliding doors, and the list goes on. Here’s a nice example of a more simplistic Shoji lamp:
It’s achieved by combining perfectly mitered little pieces of wood, sometimes of various species, together into simple or very complex designs.
I thought I would start out simple and decided to make one panel of a Shoji lamp in hopes that it would inspire me to adventure further and make a couple of lamps in the future which I think I will do as it’s something I can work on in the house with very few tools.
The only tools I used were a small miter saw and miter box, Xacto knife, some sandpaper, Titebond II Wood Glue, and CA Glue. I then gave the whole thing a quick coat of flat black water based acrylic paint and used plain white printer paper ( I went this route because I wasn’t even sure I wanted to finish it out so wasn’t about to spend all the money on the rice paper ).
So here we have my first attempt at Kumiko:
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