Hasta La Ideas

Here’s another two fascinating pieces of secret-compartment-havin’ furniture, these ones built way before Autodesk and even power tools.

Alfred Emmanuel Louis Beurdeley was a Parisian ebeniste, a cabinet-maker, back in the 1800s. He produced this beautiful “mechanical desk” circa 1880, which appears to have a single center drawer. That one works the way you’d think it does, but there’s a bit more to this table:

Cool, no? But wait, it gets better—if we go even further back, about a hundred years or so. Jean-Francois Oeben was an ebeniste in the mid-1700s, and he produced this spectacular piece of bad-assery:

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