Com munit y

FACING PAGE: Harold Kusnetz shows his daugh-
ter Ada Kusnetz-Yerman a sailboat he built as a
teen. ABOVE: Kusnetz with the double-keyboard
harpsichord he built. RIGHT: A rosette in the
harpsichord’s soundboard was carved in wood,
cast in pewter and plated in gold. It features
Kusnetz’s initials and a likeness of King David
with a crown and harp.

ette of a lion in a cage. One of the toy
chests is parked in the corner of his
family room.
Kusnetz-Yerman remembers how
she and her siblings loved the kid-
sized motorized Model T-type car
Kusnetz built, which could go up to 5
mph. Kusnetz still has the car, under
a tarp in his garage.
Phyliss, a talented musician,
resigned from the Detroit Public
Schools and started giving piano les-
sons. Kusnetz built her a hammered
dulcimer like one he’d seen in the
Smithsonian, and a calliope powered
by an old portable hairdryer with a
hose.
Phyliss had always wanted a harp-
sichord, so Kusnetz found a kit and
built a small one for her. Then he
built a clavichord, another precursor
to the piano. The clavichord has a
very soft sound, and Phyliss liked to
practice on it at night when the chil-
dren were asleep.
Kusnetz built a small foot-pumped
parlor organ from a carton of parts
Phyliss bought at a garage sale for
$12. He got the plans from the Henry
Ford Museum, whose curator was so
impressed with Kusnetz’s skill that he
offered him a job.
His masterpiece is a full-sized
harpsichord with a double keyboard.
He designed the rosette in the sound-
board, which he carved in wood, then
cast in pewter and plated in gold. It
features his initials and a likeness of
King David with a crown and a harp.
He decorated the soundboard
with paintings of flowers and birds,
including a robin, his wife’s favorite.
He wasn’t able to finish the instru-
ment before Phyliss died because she
wanted it painted “Chinese green,” a
shade so dark it looks almost black,

and Kusnetz couldn’t find the right
shade of paint; he finally mixed it
himself. The instrument is trimmed
in gold leaf.
Now Kusnetz is building a third
harpsichord that folds up into a
9-by-52-inch case. He saw one like it
in a museum in Berlin, built in 1700;
Frederick the Great of Prussia inher-
ited it from his grandmother. The
museum sold him a copy of the plans.
Kusnetz never has to look far for
new inspiration. Last year he went to
Israel and saw a menorah he liked.
The varied colors of stone made him
think of different woods — mahoga-
ny, cherry, walnut, oak — so he took a
photo and recreated the menorah in
wood when he got home, making at
least a dozen. He also made a challah
board with an inlaid Star of David for
each child.
“He constantly has to be doing
something,” Kusnetz-Yerman said.
“When he gets bored, he’ll just go
down to the basement and spend
an hour knocking out a pair of salad
tongs.”
He would never sell anything, she
said, preferring to give his creations
away as gifts. He gave two sets of
salad tongs to Congregation B’nai
Moshe, where they’re used every
week for Kiddush.
Even though she grew up with
him, Kusnetz-Yerman is awed by her
father’s talents.
Her family never hired a repairman
because her father fixed anything that
broke. “He actually changed the oil in
his car by himself up until about five
years ago,” she said, “and he continues
to fix things for me, my husband and
children. I am so fortunate that he is
93 and still going strong!” •

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August 2 • 2018

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