STORY OF THE OOKU3 SERIES

Ooku 3 Series Dresser takes its inspiration from a confluence of two ideas. I had been trying to figure out a design based on the many varieties of Japanese Tansu. Tansu to me is the ultimate storage box, simple and elegant. Much of the beauty of Tansu lies in the decorative metalwork that adorns these pieces of furniture. Without the applied metalwork Tansu shares similarities with Shaker furniture in that both are minimalist functional storage boxes with simple unadorned lines. 

I happened to see a building designed by a team of Russian architects in Berlin that is the Museum of Architectural Graphics. What I immediately liked about it was the angular movement of each level, and that each level resembled a separate box or drawer. Also intriguing was the surface texture.

In the first prototypes of the Ooku3 Series I experimented with saw kerfs and carved lines on the drawer fronts, but this ultimately looked forced. I chose instead quartersawn White Oak, and let the figure patterns and wood grain provide texture for the individual drawer sections. Each unit's set of four drawers has a different angular front pattern, and they are set up so that when they are stacked the patterns alternate. When placed side by side the alternating angles on the drawer sides provide a space  for the hand to pull the drawer out.