Wall of Boxes

Since previous project, I’ve been thinking about creating a new cabinet. Something lots of little drawers. Sort of like either a Chinese pharmacy cabinet or a secretary cabinet.

The problem with secretary cabinets is that they’re not useful as furniture today. They used to be used as the nexus of all bills and correspondence of the house, but now the laptop has replaced this. I kind of like the look of an open secretary, but it’s completely useless due to the specialized nature of the furniture.

I think what I like about the Chinese pharmacy cabinets is that mystery they project. All the drawers look the same, but no matter what ails you, the pharmacist can open up some seemly random drawer and give you a potion to cure you. As a design per se, the cabinets are just more stylish filing cabinets.

I have no idea what I would do with a drawer cabinet, but I think I want one.

After the jump are some cabinets that I’ve been trying to draw inspiration from.


I particularly like the plain drawer fronts on Jon Stam’s curiosity cabinet. The RFID feature of his cabinet is cool, but it’s a bit a novelty that I doubt I’d use, especially given the nonportability and inherent fragility of the feature.

Ffffound linked to this cabinet on the Style Files.

I really like the eclectic nature of the front of this cabinet. The different color drawers really accent the shapes of drawers. I don’t care for the peacock drawer in the center, though.

3rings linked to this cabinet by Rob Southcott. He used scrapped wood in his creation. While I don’t think I want to go with the bands of color on each drawer or the nontraditional shape, I do think he pulled off both here. It was this photo that made me consider nonuniformity in whatever my design will be.

schubLaden sells shelves with integrated drawers, along with more traditional cabinets. While I don’t like the grain on the drawers of this particular shelf, I like the idea of challenging the conventions of particular pieces of furniture.

These Chinese pharmacy cabinets show how dominating a Wall of Boxes area, especially given their uniformity. For some reason I thought that CPCs were unlabeled like this one:

but I was wrong. It seems like many of them are labeled. Either by simple notes, or like these with what appears to be either painted labels or engravings.

And of course a secretary cabinet. I don’t like the overall style of the cabinet at all. It’s a bad color and it’s ornamentation is clumsy. This is not something I would want in my house, or really any house. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see at a pole barn “antique” auction. This is just here to get me to think about the drawers, doors, and pigeon holes of the secretary.