Funquetry Shift Cabinet

Beirut is where Nada Debs’ story comes full circle: raised in Kobe, Japan, educated at RISD in Rhode Island, she moved to Lebanon as an adult to reconnect with a heritage she had grown up without. In her studio there, master craftsmen versed in marquetry, wood carving and mother-of-pearl inlay work alongside her toward what she terms Contemporary Arabesque, a style that borrows the quiet discipline of Japanese design and the ornamental richness of Arab craft in equal measure, so that a single tabletop can hold both a tea-ceremony calm and the flash of inlaid pearl.

Constructed from French oak and black steel, the Funquetry Shift Cabinet takes its name from the way its pleated marquetry panels appear to shift and slide across the doors, a hand-inlaid effect built up strip by strip in Nada Debs’ Beirut-linked ateliers. The dark steel frame grounds the pattern, letting the woodwork do the talking.