What Does a Cabinet Know?
Alex Turnbull
Inviting you to be curious
well… what does it know?
Cabinets don’t just store things. They hide them, reveal them, and maybe even remember them. When you encounter an object like this, you’re usually seeing a finished piece, much of its life cleaned up and polished.
But what you don’t see are all the hands, decisions, and moments embedded inside it, the parts that the object carries with it. This project started from an interest in how an object might invite you to notice, to ask questions, and to be curious.
How can an object invite curiosity?
How can it reveal the people behind its making?
How might it reward attention over time?
What Does a Cabinet Know? is a project that acts as both object and experience.
Inspired by cabinets of curiosities, it shifts the focus inward, rather than displaying curious objects, allowing the cabinet itself to become the curiosity.
Central to the project is the idea of the “more-than-maker”, the many people whose labour is embedded in an object but rarely acknowledged.
From arborists to technicians to peers, making is always collective.
Its carved, scaffold-like framework holds clean, linear boxes. Like labour, that scaffolding is the messy, hidden structure that allows something polished and complete to exist.
What appears clean and resolved is actually upheld by something much more complex and human underneath.
Through subtle material gestures, it encourages a closer look.
Magnetized inlays of the same wood species appear only in certain light.
Hardware and hinges are handmade, giving space to elements often meant to be invisible and ignored.
Carved textures scatter the piece, recording each movement of the hand in spaces that are felt more than seen.
Some elements were carved collaboratively within my community, extending authorship further beyond a single maker.
Small cabinet nymphs live within the piece. With their big, grimacing teeth, they appear to have gnawed on the cabinet over time, turning the house into a home.
Who knows what kind of traces they left behind…
Details are not immediately visible, but revealed by spending time with the piece. The more you look, the more it reveals.
Many iterations, prototypes and models informed the final concept and design.
The frame was constructed with 96 lap joints, a lot of glue, and a lot of math, then hand-carved to fit each component perfectly.
This project is an invitation to engage differently with objects, to slow down, to look closer, and to consider the people and processes behind the things we live with.
It asks you to move beyond what something is, and to begin wondering how it came to be, and who made it possible.
In many ways, this piece has shifted my own practice as well. It has taught me to take time with craft, with detail, and with process, and to find value beyond outcomes.
So when I ask, “What does a cabinet know? ” I’m not looking for a single answer,
I’m hoping it encourages you to keep asking questions.
