The Medieval IKEA Hacker: A 15th c. dresser for my camp kitchen

[hrj]

It is part of the constant SCA balancing act that Authentic Stuff often tends to be large, heavy, and bulky, or requires multiple servants to transport and set up. (Not always, but often.) As someone who loves serious cooking at events -- whether modern cooking of medieval foods or full all-out medieval cooking in little footed pipkins -- I’ve spent the last quarter century penduluming back and forth between practicality and authenticity (whether only in appearance or in underlying structure).

Through long trial and error, my compromise point has settled on the following conveniences necessary for my sanity:

* camp kitchen furniture must be able to be packed in a reasonably-sized vehicle
* camp kitchen furniture must be able to be set up and taken down in a reasonable amount of time
* ideally, camp kitchen supplies must be able to be packed and stored in the same structures in which they are used at events
* camp kitchen supplies and equipment must be stored and transported modularly so that different needs can be accommodated without totally repacking everything and without taking All The Things to every event
* my kitchen at events must be organized in a way that makes cooking easy and safe

To this we add the following goals on the historic side:

* modern elements in the kitchen should be relatively hidden from view from outside my camp
* the larger physical structures used to organize my kitchen should at least be not obviously modern (e.g., wood surfaces if possible where visible) and should bear some conceptual similarity to historic equipment whenever practical

I confess that I’ve more often settled for “not obviously modern” and “natural surfaces” than the further goals. I settled for purchasing a round firebox rather than making or commissioning the reproduction of the Roman cooking brazier I long for. I’ve been a only gradually inching closer to having reasonably authentic trestle tables for prep and dining. But I’ve long had my dreams. And one of my dreams is for my camp kitchen to include something like this:



This is the project diary of that quest. It is not a quest that involves making authentic medieval furniture, it’s a quest that involves hacking modern kit furniture into something that combines practicality and functionality with a medieval look-and-feel. But first we must begin in the modern era.

Several years ago, I found a useful practical compromise for modularity, packability, and at-event functionality in IKEA’s “Trofast” storage system. These combine some stunningly modern plastic lidded tubs …




… with a storage cabinet available in a natural pine …



The storage bins come in 3 sizes: with heights of 1, 2, or 3 units, and this particular cabinet has space for 6 units, which provides for a nice flexibility in modules. I started out by getting 2 of the storage towers and an assortment of bins. To this I added a board lying across the top of the two towers to serve as a working surface.



Functional, but it only passes the visual test when tucked back in the shadows inside the pavilion.



I improved the visuals somewhat by adding back panels and improved the functionality by swapping in a piece of solid-wood shelving for the original particleboard mock-up.



This makes it slightly less ugly when used in public.




But we’re still a long way from a medieval dresser. And I’d become addicted to the utility of the storage bins, but it was looking a little daunting to build a storage unit to hold them that could look like this …


(to be continued)