The creator of this masterful papercut was a watchmaker in Podolia (present-day Ukraine), who came to the United States in the 1920s with his five children. Three years after he had cut it, he added the name of his mother Pessya, and the day of her death in 1906. The work mizrah appears in a medallion on the double-headed eagle. Snakes twine around the columns Jachin and Boaz, a common motif in Eastern European Jewish papercuts. Flanking the pillars are two griffins whose origins derive from the guardian cherubim described in detail in Exodus. They were half lion, half eagle, and had human faces.