The door in the photo is one of my masterpieces which took two years to complete. My other masterpieces are the Led Zeppelin IV full length painting on my old bedroom door (another “door” masterpiece that took me six years to complete) and my oil painting of Café Vivaldi (which took approximately two years to complete). Both of these currently hang in my old bedroom at 105 Maple Terrace.

This new masterpiece incorporates a few different interests of mine into this one work of art: it uses the ambrosia wood that I grew at 105 Maple Terrace; the carpentry work incorporates several examples of Japanese joinery; the wood is finished in the same technique used by George Nakashima; the stained glass design is taken from a 17th century church window in Havana; my brother Ricky taught me how to make stained glass for this project; and the doorknob is reclaimed from the toolroom in the basement of 105 Maple Terrace that I refurbished (it had not been in service for several decades).

All the wood used to make this door was sourced from a sugar maple tree that I planted in 1972 at 105 Maple Terrace. For a description of the "ambrosia wood" from this tree, see my blog post “Ode to Kindergarten Teachers” from 4/18/15. In the photo at the top of this page there is a barely perceptable stump to the right of my left hand against the white fence, that's the stump from this tree.

There aren't any nails or screws in the door (although it will hang on metal hinges). Ricky leant me “The Art of Japanese Joinery” by Kiyosi Seike, and from it I incorporated six different joints into the door. Three splicing joints: the shiplap joint; the tongue and groove; and the mortised rabbeted oblique scarf joint (I made a variation of this one, I didn’t do the full “mortising”). And three connecting joints: the beveled shoulder mortise and tenon; the cross lap joint; and the mortise and tenon joint.

I finished the door with five coats of tung oil. This was a wood finish that George Nakashima often used to finish indoor wood furniture.

Toward 1638 a simple church was raised on Cuba and Acosta Streets in Havana in what was then called the Campeche neighborhood. It’s called La Iglesia del Espiritu Santo. It was destined for the devotion of the freed blacks and mulattoes who had contributed both money and labor to build it. In 1773 this church became the only place of worship in Havana with the right to offer sanctuary to fugitives from the authorities. One of the restorations that occurred in 1960-1961 was under the supervision of Eugenio Batista (who was an acquaintance of my father-in-law, Anibal Rene Porta). This restoration uncovered an original ox-eye window. The stained glass design in my door is a copy of the pattern of one of the stained glass windows in this church. I added a long rectangular green pain at the bottom of the stain glass design. This was not a part of the original design. I added it because it is the only transparent glass in the door and it enables our dog Ziggy to look through the door because we lock him in the kitchen on a daily basis (that where he sleeps at night). I chose green because the other colors in the pattern are blue, yellow and white and green is the color you get when you combine blue and yellow.