Ways to Use Shoji Screens

The living room in Nakashima's Reception House features several Greenrock ottomans and a Buckeye burl coffee table. The complex also includes a pool, arched pool house, workshop barn, and studio, among other structures.

“What often happens in our relationship is I come to Funn with an idea and he makes it into something livable.” —Vincent Kartheiser

Custom shoji-inspired screens of Roberts’s design conceal the closet and extend to provide privacy for the adjacent shower and soaking tub.

The kitchen and Baker's home office, which has artwork and inspiration pinned above the desk, are aligned behind sliding fiberglass-and-bamboo shoji screens. Devoid of cabinetry, the kitchen is fitted out with industrial cantilevered shelving from E-Z Shelving Systems in Kansas City. The red tiles behind the stove are from Heath Ceramics.

Grade A Maple “For us, the dinner table is huge,” says Katie. The pair met furniture designer Seth Eshelman—whose Rochester-based company Staach produces what she called “environmentally conscientious furniture”—at a teatasting event, and they felt he shared their “vision and values.” Eshelman’s Cain dining set is made from maple. Now Yukimi “The meditation room is where we get our Japanese ya-yas out,” says Scott. “I wanted yukimi, which means ‘snow-viewing,’ shoji screens because they open from the bottom as well as side to side. Glen Collins, a guy in Oakland, California, is the one American I could find whose company makes them.”

In the hallway another set of sliders shows off a mix of influences from shoji to Schindler, with multitoned wood reflecting the sunlight.

A glowing home in Japan has milky-white, one-and-a-half-inch plastic sheets wrapped around the exterior to let in light and provide insulation.

Warren Platner, though, gets the credit for the Wire series lounge chair for Knoll in the bathroom.

Nearby, the bathroom includes a composting toilet and a Home Depot sink on a pedestal Chris made from chunks of found wood.