Why this tea chest earns its place
This is a two-drawer tea chest in oak, and its job is to hold a hot-drinks selection on a counter without the counter looking ransacked by mid-morning. Sachets in open bowls or in the cartons they arrived in get picked through, tip over and spread; two drawers put the selection behind a face a guest opens and closes again, so the station looks the same at eleven as it did at seven.
The footprint is 398 × 212 mm, which is a narrow strip beside an urn or a machine rather than a working section of counter, and at 244 mm tall the top of it sits where a standing guest reaches without stooping. Stacking the storage in two drawers instead of spreading it flat is what buys that footprint: varieties stay separated one above the other, and someone helping themselves finds what they want by opening a drawer rather than by lifting things out of the way. Restocking runs the same way — pull a drawer, fill it, close it, and nothing on display has to be taken apart to do it.
Oak gives it the weight the drawers need. A drawer pulls out without the whole chest travelling down the counter behind it, and solid timber absorbs the daily knocks of a service line instead of chipping the way a coated finish does. The grey finish runs cooler than raw timber, so it holds its own against dark counters, slate and monochrome china rather than warming everything around it. Clean it as wood: clear the drawers, wipe with a lightly damp cloth and dry it off straight away.
