An Alluring Design - The URCHIN Cabinet by Jake Phipps

The 'URCHIN Cabinet - Onyx Black' is one of The Artling's newly listed design pieces by Jake Phipps. Jake is a British designer who hails from North Yorkshire. After graduating from John Makepeace's furniture design school, Jake set up his own studio in London in 2005 and began designing production pieces for a wide range of European manufacturers. Since 2010, he has specialised in designing and making his own unique and highly engineered pieces. His award-winning work is often characterised by energetic and elegant metallic forms that are not only purposeful, but exude a luxurious and precious quality to them.

This unique wall-mounted cabinet takes the form of an urchin shell, providing both creative influence and technical innovation. The doors of the cabinet are adorned with seventy polished black steel panels, which are curved and faceted to create fragmented reflections of it's users environment. These panels enclose a central convex mirror that creates a similarly distorted, yet crisper and cleaner view, drawing the eye inwards.

The cabinet's precision engineered opening and closing mechanism does not use any electrical motors, but it is operated entirely and effortlessly the user alone. By pushing a discreet key latch that pops the central mirror outwards, the user simply pulls the central mirror downwards, revealing a polished marble work-surface on its reversed side and a luxurious wooden interior.

The cabinet contains a central shelf with mirrored backed walls, bringing light to the working area of the cabinet. The top and bottom sections each offer four adjustable shelves, which are made of toughened glass. The alluring cabinet also contains two discreet storage drawers that sit within the door and open on push catches. 

Here are some videos that showcase the unique design and function of the URCHIN Cabinet.

Browse more of Jake Phipps' work here

Check out more of our newest design pieces here