There’s a charming little garment industry supply shop located right next to the Behavior building, a throwback to a time when our Manhattan neighborhood was dominated by factories, showrooms, supply warehouses, and tool stores for the garment industry that used to be located right here in what is still called the Garment District. For the past few years, the shop has been occasionally putting some object or bit of furniture outside with a “for sale” sign on it.
Last week, they were selling the beautiful chest of drawers on the right, and a few days later the one on the left went out, too. Both times I happened to be able to be the first one to run in and buy the drawers (each was priced at the strange but crazy low amount of $142). The first time, I beat another customer by mere minutes!
Believe me, I have enough stuff to put in these drawers. But here’s my question: How shall I organize them? I don’t want to put large text labels on the outside of the drawers or otherwise muck up the appearance with any modern-looking attachments. One idea was to put a single sheet of paper in the upper-left small drawer with a key to the contents of all the drawers in it, and then to simply leave the drawers unmarked. Any other brilliant or clever ideas from the information designers out there in Graphpaperland?
time
You could go the expensive-ish-yet-19th Century-industrial route & attach metal label-shaped pieces & engrave the text.
Or attach the kind that alows you to slip a piece of paper in, which you could then label with an old type-writer.
@time: Yeah, I wish I could find those slip-in jobbies in a matching set of 54 peices with the appropriate patina of age. Being flexible about the labels is important — which is part of the reason why I like the slip-in method, or the single-key-sheet approach.
I agree slip-ins would be the best looking solution, at a pinch how about old fashioned luggage tags?
You’ll see them in any period set english film where children are sent away during the blitz they have their name on a paper tag. You could attach these with string to each handle (as I said, not as classy).
I found some ready made, or some to download and make your own.
It may cost the same as the two cabinets (which are quite nice), but, then, “all you need to do” is to ‘distress’ them. The best method escapes me at the moment.
@Matt Turner: I like the paper tag idea. Attached to a little bit of twine too. I’m sure I could find some that might look nice. Still, it could end up looking like a Christmas tree all hund with ornaments, though, too.
@time: It’s funny, I was joking the other day about the very situation you propose — that buying a bunch of hardware would probably cost more than the shelves themselves!
Comments
7 responses to “42 Drawers (+12)”
There’s a charming little garment industry supply shop located right next to the Behavior building, a throwback to a time when our Manhattan neighborhood was dominated by factories, showrooms, supply warehouses, and tool stores for the garment industry that used to be located right here in what is still called the Garment District. For the past few years, the shop has been occasionally putting some object or bit of furniture outside with a “for sale” sign on it.
Last week, they were selling the beautiful chest of drawers on the right, and a few days later the one on the left went out, too. Both times I happened to be able to be the first one to run in and buy the drawers (each was priced at the strange but crazy low amount of $142). The first time, I beat another customer by mere minutes!
Believe me, I have enough stuff to put in these drawers. But here’s my question: How shall I organize them? I don’t want to put large text labels on the outside of the drawers or otherwise muck up the appearance with any modern-looking attachments. One idea was to put a single sheet of paper in the upper-left small drawer with a key to the contents of all the drawers in it, and then to simply leave the drawers unmarked. Any other brilliant or clever ideas from the information designers out there in Graphpaperland?
You could go the expensive-ish-yet-19th Century-industrial route & attach metal label-shaped pieces & engrave the text.
Or attach the kind that alows you to slip a piece of paper in, which you could then label with an old type-writer.
Similar to this:
http://lifeincolor.typepad.com/life_in_color/images/drawer.jpg
@time: Yeah, I wish I could find those slip-in jobbies in a matching set of 54 peices with the appropriate patina of age. Being flexible about the labels is important — which is part of the reason why I like the slip-in method, or the single-key-sheet approach.
Wow, those are hot! What a steal too.
I agree slip-ins would be the best looking solution, at a pinch how about old fashioned luggage tags?
You’ll see them in any period set english film where children are sent away during the blitz they have their name on a paper tag. You could attach these with string to each handle (as I said, not as classy).
I found some ready made, or some to download and make your own.
http://tinyurl.com/2ls47x
http://tinyurl.com/3brp2q
http://vintagehardware.com/catalog/home.php?cat=77
http://houseofantiquehardware.com/?sc=11&category=94
It may cost the same as the two cabinets (which are quite nice), but, then, “all you need to do” is to ‘distress’ them. The best method escapes me at the moment.
@Matt Turner: I like the paper tag idea. Attached to a little bit of twine too. I’m sure I could find some that might look nice. Still, it could end up looking like a Christmas tree all hund with ornaments, though, too.
@time: It’s funny, I was joking the other day about the very situation you propose — that buying a bunch of hardware would probably cost more than the shelves themselves!
I found some good options here, too:
Ebay File Cabinet Fittings
The second items on this page look perfect — small and simple:
Card Holders