Part furniture, part artworks the Mille Feuille Storage Units by Emmanuelle Moureaux for German brand Schönbuch are certainly practical works of art.
Resembling layers of rainbow-colored sheets of wood that, the units reflect the designer’s love of color, as seen in her previous work, such as the Sugamo Shinkin Bank project and the Shibafu coffee Table. The vibrant colors in conjunction with the three-dimensional design that constitute this collection an absolute eye-catcher in any room. The chaotic “layered look” suggests randomness, however order prevails: all the layers are the same size, even if they seem to be stacked haphazardly.
Schönbuch has this unique creations exclusively hand-built and they were presented for the first time at the “Handmade 2013” international trade fair in Milan. Initially it was a one-off collection, yet the overwhelmingly positive reactions resulted in the Mille Feuille collection going into studio production.
Emmanuelle Moureaux has designed one-off furniture pieces in the past for her architectural projects, but this is her first production series we sincerely hope it will not be her last!
Schönbuch’s managing director Michael Ress explains: “We put our handmade collaboration couples (and ourselves) under considerable pressure to bring this one-off collection into production. The normal time span for product development in the furniture industry, from concept to retail, is something like five years. Yet in the case of the Mille Feuille Storage Units by Emmanuelle Moureaux we knew that a whirlwind romance doesn’t have to be short-lived if the chemistry is there, and had to outdo ourselves”.
“Right from the beginning, they understood what I imagined completely” says Moureaux. “She marveled at the painstaking effort the firm went to in order to get the colors, form and finish exactly right” adds Michael Ress, “It was an excellent cooperation between Emmanuelle and our team, a perfect initial design, great communication, quick responses and fast decisions”.
The Mille Feuille Storage Units comes in three sizes, with two, three and four drawers respectively. They are made from MDF and come lacquered in 8, 12 or 21 different colors. It is worth noting that Schönbuch had to invest in a new paint-mixing machine to meet Emmanuelle Moureaux’s exact specifications. The Mille Feuille Storage Units are time consuming to produce and require extremely skilled craftsmanship to get them right. Yet we think they are totally worth the effort, even though the company does not expect to produce than a small number of units. After all, these pieces are unique showstoppers, not an ordinary chest of drawers.
