Penwith1 – Drawer Chest

This drawer chest was the first piece in a range of furniture designed to represent the Penwith peninsula in West Cornwall. Penwith is a rugged peninsula battered by weather off the Atlantic. It is scattered with ancient stone monuments which in their time where built as places of worship using the finest materials and latest technologies. What remains now are magnificent sculptures shaped by centuries of weathering. The oak carcass takes its form from these monuments.

The drawer fronts are made using bog oak veneer. This was selected to give the piece a sense of age. Bog oak is wood from ancient forest preserved under the ground for anything up to 4000 years. The stone monuments in Penwith were built around 2000 BC, and so are a similar age to the oak. I like to think that there is a chance that this very tree was growing at the time the stone monuments were being built.

When thinking of the Cornish moors it is very rarely a picture postcard sunny day that I imagine. More often you will see a dark heavy cloud looming over the landscape. The Black fading into the brown on the drawer fronts is used to illustrate this.