Britta’s Cabinet

Britta’s Cabinet (~1970)

Oak stand and carcase.
49" (H) x 20" (W) x 15" (D)

While most of Krenov’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was commissioned by his Swedish customers, this cabinet on a stand was made for his wife, Britta, his greatest advocate. This cabinet remained in Britta’s bedroom from the time it was made until her passing in 2017.

Britta was a schoolteacher who supported the family and allowed her husband the flexibility and freedom to pursue his craft. She was an economics and finance teacher from 1960 to 1979 at the St. Jacobi Gymnasium (High School) in the Vällingby neighborhood in Stockholm, just a short walk from the family’s home in Bromma. This regular employment created the stability in the family’s income, which allowed her husband to pursue the irregular and (early on) unprofitable income source that was his passion.

This veneered oak cabinet, with its carcase suspended in a framework stand, is a tour-de-force of Krenov’s exacting use of joinery. The carcase’s dovetails, the rounded and rectangular through-tenons of the stand and the five-sided legs all point to his mastery of the traditional skillset of the cabinetmaker and his ability to arrange these elements into an elegantly composed piece of furniture. It is one of the larger pieces Krenov made, and its proportions are quite different from much of Krenov’s other standing cabinets.