Hyper-Intelligent Blue

Here is a vintage printer’s cabinet drawer that I picked up many years ago.  I really like it because it sits at the intersection of history, technology and linguistics, three of my favorite topics.  The varied sizes of the spaces in the drawer were originally used for holding letters; the largest spaces for the common letters.  Now, it’s also a decorative and functional piece with space to display small items of various sizes.

I realized recently that I needed to make a giant-sized replica of a printer’s drawer.  Because bigger is better, right?

I built the replica five feet wide and four feet tal.  It has a plywood back, 2×4’s around the outside, and 1×3’s for the letter-spacers.  I cut dados along the sides and ran 1×3’s across the entire length as letter-separator/shelves.  There are dados in the crossways shelves as well to put short sections of 1×3 as vertical spacers/supports.  Here’s a picture of the work in progress.

To make it look aged, I added stain with the cross-shelves in place.  Nothing special to make it look aged other than being a bit sloppy.  After this was complete, I selectively removed sections of supports and shelves to make variable sized spaces.  The unstained wood shows through where cross-ways shelves were removed, which adds to the aged effect.

Each small cell is about 4 inches high and 5 inches wide.  Thus a 2×2 cell is just the right size for an 8×10 picture.

Here’s a couple views of the completed project, installed and filled with memorabilia.