Alsace Apothecary Drawers

Every drawer still carries its old ink, the faded writing of a workshop that knew exactly what went where. Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and came out of an Alsace workshop, it runs long and low with forty-nine small drawers, each pulled by a brass ring and some divided into compartments within. Alsace, up on the German border, built its furniture to last and to work, and a bank of drawers like this held the memory of a whole trade, every part and material in its own labeled place. Sylvie runs it along a wall as a sideboard, the drawers keeping everything a house owns sorted and out of sight, the old writing left exactly as it is.