CHINESE ‘CHIC’ …

Jun 17

When we moved house into a smaller town house, we did not have room for the cabinet that I used to keep my jewellery in. I say my jewellery, I call it my ‘junk’ jewellery or otherwise what is know as custom jewellery.

Side note! I would love to think that I needed a entire cabinet to store my diamonds & gold in - But I don’t have enough precious jewels to fill a cabinet! A different matter if you were to talk about my shoe collection I need several cabinets not to mention the wardrobe & the space under the stairs!

A visit to a local ‘bric-a-brac’ store with a tape measure, we had a space in mind on the landing of the stairs outside our bedroom were a cabinet would fit perfectly, it was at the time a ‘size’ decision, no more no less. We found a cabinet that was the right dimensions, which had been ‘DIY’ed’ in thick white glutinous paint. It was as if my mother had owned it in an earlier life. [My mother has a penchant for painting things white, albeit, if she had painted this cabinet the finish would have been far superior].

Bingo!! When we opened the draws they were compartmentalised into perfect sections for my jewellery. I never really looked too closely, I did notice of course that the draws where beautifully ‘dovetailed’ - [A dovetail joint or simply dovetail is a joinery technique most commonly used in woodworking joinery, denotes a sign of craftmanship.] To be honest with you the overall impression was that it was - ‘kinda’ quirky but fitted the space! This was about 11 years ago now.

I filled the draws with my jewellery & vowed to sort the finish of the cabinet at a later stage - But like all things in life other things got in the way. Over the next few years sun from the window opposite started to lift the paint off the top of the cabinet & you could easily peal it off in places. So where as it originally looked ‘sort of’ - ‘shabby-chic’. It was beginning to look a bit lack lustre.

One afternoon exiting our bedroom I looked at the cabinet which was now looking more ‘shabby’ than ‘chic’, we are in the process of redeveloping the house, so I pulled out one of the draws, emptied the contents onto our bed. Grabbing a metal nail file I started to scratch at some of the paint that was more amicable to falling away easily. It was then I realised what we had. A Chinese medicine/spice ‘apothecary’ cabinet.

I have used these cabinets before on my interior design projects, strangely enough I had just sold two recently. I could not believe how blind I was to this absolute beauty! This old ‘chap’ had some real antique quality that I had completely overlooked. So another project emerged - At times I cursed myself for even starting it, as not all the paint came away without a considerable fight & ‘elbow grease’ was required in buckets loads. It took two weeks to get the majority of the paint off, with the help at times of my husband when I became a tad exasperated by the job. One of the problems was the Chinese hieroglyphic’s on the draws appeared to be written on some sort of paper & then attached to the wooden surface, which obviously we did not want to ruin, a couple of the draw fronts had been replaced by a more porous wood, which was difficult to work with & the three sides of the cabinet were not of the same wood as the front so perhaps the piece had been part of a bigger set of unit cabinets?

What ever we got there in the end, some of the draws as you can see from the images are pock marked with age & old bits of paint whilst others gleam, the top of the cabinet shines albeit, again has suffered some traumas over the last hundred years or so.. That is okay with me - that is part of the charm … I am really pleased with it - What a treasure to find, right under my nose! - Still holding my ‘junk jewellery’ …