Vintage Pharmacy Cabinet

An Homage to the Past by Embracing the Present.

- By Dillon Baker

PROJECT #2016

Skill Level: Intermediate

Time: 3 days

Cost: $400

Over the years it has become apparent that all projects are not created equal. Although, they all seem to come with their equal share of challenges and complexities. It never fails, no matter how much preplanning is implemented, there always seems to be an issue that materializes past the point of no return.

For years, my remedy to this was to destroy and discard any signs of what I deemed a failure of personal effort. Allowing such a blunder to become public was inconceivable. It wasn’t until later in my woodworking design career that I realized that these “mistakes” were paramount to the process of learning and development. Not only is it important to confront these miscalculations, it’s the resolve from these faux pas that generates the “ah-ha” moment(s) within the discipline of design. This project, being no exception to the rest, happens to be a model example of this realization.

Initially inspired by 20th century medical equipment, this pharmacy style cabinet evolved from an acute case of modern nostalgia and an impulse to reverse engineer. The self-imposed objective then became focused on incorporating modern building materials and techniques to achieve a look of the past while making sure a woodworker could build it. The original cabinets were made from metal. This one’s primary medium is Baltic birch plywood.