COSMOS

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In 2024, I felt like giving myself the ultimate challenge: to create a masterpiece that put all my cabinetmaking skills to the test. The piece would be made exclusively from offcuts and excess wood from my workshop, and the inspiration was to come from the Wunderkammer cabinets of curiosities of the 17th century. The cabinet took a little more than a full working year to complete, from 2024 to 2026. 

The Cosmos cabinet is a piece that invites you to explore. It takes time to delve into its details and contents. Opening the 24 drawers reveals their content: a collection dedicated to fascinating items from nature. Each drawer has its own internal structure and theme – crystals, minerals, conches, fossils, wood samples and so forth. The upper drawers contain the larger objects. The middle drawers have inserts that you can take out for closer inspection. The lower drawers have inserts in two tiers. In the back of the drawers, there is a small hidden box that can only be accessed by removing the insert. 

The exterior of the cabinet is full of details that spark a wide range of associations. The surfaces are dominated by black ebony with details in white mammoth tusk, creating an impression reminiscent of stars in a dark universe. The outside surfaces are rough, and the front has a smoothly polished three-dimensional wave pattern radiating out from the centre of the cabinet. The attention is drawn to the small cabinet in the centre, which opens to reveal a compartment lined with golden veneer arranged in a pattern reminiscent of the rays of the sun or visualisations of travelling at the speed of light in the old Starwars films. Its surfaces are covered with mother-of-pearl dots forming Zodiac constellations. The space can be used to display select items from the larger collection. The cabinet stands on a two-tone base that might spark a wide range of associations, ranging from the fiery exhaust of a rocket to patterns on 17th-century robes. 

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