These cabinets are the result of a continued creative relationship with the renknowned Japanese company, Hinoki Kougei. In this case specifically with the president of the company, Tadanori Tozawa, and son of the respected founder Mr Chuzo Tozawa.
The front face of each cabinet uses a single piece of timber cleft in two resulting in a highly textured surface, reflected on each door.
I have long had a preoccupation with bi-symmetry. The notion of splitting one thing into two is, I find quite strange. A destructive moment creates; a cell divides. I have experimented with this idea through various projects, including my Split Box Shelves in which a single log is randomly split to create an irregular yet perfectly complete shaped box, and later in the Palindrome series in which rough moulds and casts are joined together to form reflected bi-symmetrical pieces of furniture.
During the development stage of the first project I worked on with Hinoki Kougei, the Dodai benches, Mr Chuzo Tozawa proposed that we could use gigantic logs split into two to form the sides of the benches, and we have continued to use this process for these new cabinets, giving a frontal focus to this dramatic cleaving action. A further curious effect of bi-symmetrical objects is that they invariably hold animal or human like characteristics, our brains are hard wired to find faces, torsos, eyes and I enjoy this ambiguity when looking at forms created using just vegetable material.
The wood chosen for each cabinet is selected carefully according to how it will split and how it will work in relation to the overall dimensions of the cabinet. The effect, we hope is similar to looking into a forest, and then perhaps the trees looking back. Peter Marigold
The cabinets are commissioned by and shown with Sarah Myerscough Gallery in London and are now in many private and public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Le Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), France.