"In the case of the Roma, the owner's wife didn't only want to have all furniture handles embellished with Swarovski stones. She also insisted the surfaces of the closets be covered in the exclusive skins of rays. Gehr, a master carpenter by trade, faced a challenge: Where could he get ray skins? What was the best time of year to buy them? How do you work with the stuff? What did it cost? And what should he estimate? When all the questions had been answered, and the furniture had been upholstered in ray skin, the owner and his wife came to Lunestadt in Lower Saxony to see the result. [...]