Tambour

A tambour is a rolling door or lid made from many narrow wood slats glued to a flexible fabric or canvas backing, letting the whole assembly curve and slide along a track the way a roll-top desk's namesake lid does. The flexible backing is what makes the trick work -- individually rigid wood slats, joined only by the flexible material behind them, can bend around a curve as a group even though no single slat can bend at all.

Building a tambour is largely a precision-milling exercise -- each slat needs a consistent profile (often a small bead or curve on the front face to disguise the gaps between slats when rolled) and the slats need gluing to the backing with even, consistent spacing so the whole assembly rolls smoothly along its track without binding.