Anniversary Jewellery Cabinet

With a very important anniversary coming up, the question arose of what to make as a suitably special gift - and when a fine gold chain became knotted I had my answer. ‘Should be hung up,’ advised the jeweller who untangled it for me. Once we’d established that he was talking about the chain, the grey matter got to work designing a jewellery cabinet with space for hanging alongside more conventional storage.

The old design mantra, ‘Form follows function’ played repeatedly in my mind as I doodled on endless bits of paper. Yes, function comes first - but the form had to be good, too!

Then there were the technical issues: how exactly would I joint three pieces of wood neatly into the outlandish forms that were emerging? Just as I thought I’d got it right, that old woodworkers’ demon ‘Seasonal Wood Movement’ appeared, grinning triumphantly - evilly - into my eyes and another well-laid plan ended up nourishing the waste paper bin.

The main problem was providing enough height in the hanging spaces, allowing for the ‘extras’ like 25mm for the carousels themselves, about 75mm for carcass and finish panels - which instantly expanded the overall height - and also having plenty of ‘box’ space for for other jewellery, while keeping the thing within reasonable limits and pleasing proportions.

This is becoming a long story - well, actually, it was a long story. To cut it short: this design suddenly emerged from the jungle of rejects, with an octagonal tower - solving the proportions issues - that rotates on a turntable giving easy access to both sides - with four carousels for hanging and two banks of drawers for the rest. Two final issues remained: how would the venerated user know which set of drawers she was looking at; and what depth of drawers would be right for the various contents? With four deep drawers on one side and eight shallower ones on the reverse, the issues resolved one another.