Spice Box
Constructed in conjunction with the Chipstone Foundation, the Spice Box was an architectural installation inspired by a seventeenth-century spice chest. The Spice Box invited users to ponder the chest’s construction and the setting in which it originally existed as well as the chest’s relationship with the modern world.
The Spice Box was located in an area defined by pre-existing dimensional lumber framing within the attic of the carriage house on the Chipstone Foundation’s grounds in Fox Point, Wisconsin. The framing was kept in place and the decision was made to construct the installation primarily out of dimensional lumber to give the project a close link to its site by adapting the vernacular that was present in the attic.
The installation’s structure highlights the construction of the spice chest by employing precise wooden joinery. While the chest’s joints were painstakingly cut by hand and the Spice Box’s joints were cut with power tools, both were built without the use of metal fasteners.
A series of spice-covered globes were suspended on a network of ropes within the structure of the Spice Box, filling the attic with the aroma of the spices. Each globe was connected via a rope to another globe at a random position in the installation’s structure and contained the whole form of its corresponding spice. The random connections between the globes served to encourage discovery and unexpected interactions within the installation.
