Most of the pieces that I have designed and built over the years were following a pretty similar aesthetic: metal frames with wood accents.  I wanted to step away from that look some to work on my abilities focusing on one medium.  I have always loved the way steel and metal pair well together, both functionally and aesthetically, but in using those materials, I think you miss out on some of the finer techniques of making pieces from one medium work.  I've wanted to step away from that with some new pieces.

Despite my desire to build a piece entirely from wood, the idea for the credenza came about with a metal drawer pull design detail I wanted to pursuit.  The idea was to use a thin piece of metal flat bar on the top of the drawer.  The notches on the drawer face would then taper down revealing a nice little groove machined out of the bottom of the flatbar.  The metal presented a nice opportunity to give the piece some accent color/texture with either powder coated steel, or different metals such as brass.  Having this unique detail gave me the motivation to design a larger piece around it, which resulted in the record credenza.  

Overview

Inspiration

Solution