Gorgeous kitchen! Our cabinet maker is going to make a model of a wooden vertical pull he can attach to upper cabinets (we didn't think of a carve out!), but despite a protective topcoat, in time, the look of that wood handle will eventually be so different than the slab fronts due to hand oils and whatever cleaning I do. I'm leaning to flip the Emtek pulls over and use them on the bottoms of the upper cabinet doors. The finger feel is ok.

Make sure the corners of those are not sharp.

I had squared edge pulls like that (not Emtek) and I had scabby knuckle all the time. In this house I used edge pulls with a slightly eased corner

I also had plain uppers with the routed area on the backs of the doors. In my case, that meant I always used a paper towel to open the uppers because I did not want to get fingerprints on, or burnish the lacquered finish. That's just my mentality...

Can you test them? i’ve found that cabinet hardware is somewhat personal. For example, a neighber had all of their cabinet hardware replaced because husband’s fingers were a liitle too large for comfortably using. We have the same , no issues.

An edge pull, any metal needs to be accounted for AT the cabinet order/ creation whether yours is factory, or a local custom wood crafter, A "recess" created for the mounting on door or drawer edge..

I would not advise a wood pull. Will get grimy, and repeated cleaning will cause major change between faces and handles, over time.

To be FLUSH is the point

[1, 2, 3, 4]

• Step 1: Building a Routing Jig
  Woodworkers construct a custom router guide jig out of plywood or MDF. The jig clamps securely to the cabinet face and features left, right, and rear guide walls. This acts as a physical bounding box that restricts the router from sliding too far and over-cutting the wood. [1, 2, 3]
• Step 2: Routing the Channel
  A plunge router equipped with a straight fluted bit or a dedicated finger-pull profile bit is used. The router depth is set precisely to match the thickness of the metal pull's mounting spine (usually around 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch, or 2–3 mm). [1, 2]
• Step 3: Making the Cuts
  The woodworker makes multiple shallow, controlled passes within the jig boundaries to clear out the wood material along the top or side edge. A sacrificial block of wood is usually clamped to the end of the door to prevent the router bit from blowing out or splintering the edges as it exits the wood. [1, 2]
• Step 4: Sanding and Clean-up
  The newly routed slot is sanded by hand to remove any friction burns or rough splinters left behind by the high-speed router bit

Thank you, @JAN MOYER! I have nixed the wood handle idea.

Actually a number of back mounted edge pulls like these are thin enough that they fit in the gap that full overlay doors have between them and the carcass of the cabinet. There is a gap so the back corner of the door on the hinge size does not rub, and if you notice there is usually a rubber bumper on the opening corner of the door somewhere to maintain the gap evenly.

It depends on the pull, but I have not had to have any modifications to the doors for back mounted edge pulls like the one you show, which look thin enough to fit in that gap.

I mounted them horizontally on the bottom edge of the upper cabinets. There is no need at all to do any recess or routing as they are quite thin. The rubber bumper at the top of the doors is thicker than the back of the pulls so they don’t touch the face frame. They function perfectly fine for us.

Many thanks to you, @BobH! Thanks for that close up photo! Your woodwork looks gorgeous.