BH | Studio Pienza 2-Door Cabinet

The sideboard's Italian name, credenza, recalls the Renaissance dining room, where a side cabinet held dishes before they reached the table. Pienza, rebuilt in the fifteenth century as an ideal town around an orderly piazza and measured façades, shows how deeply Italian design has always loved proportion. A calm grid of wood answers that taste, and the same quiet lattice runs through Japanese screens and modern cabinetmaking alike.

This is the compact member of the line: a waist-high case with two doors, each a pale wooden grid with a woven panel set behind it. A light press opens them, with no pulls to snag a sleeve, and the frame is wood with a natural veneer. Inside there is one fixed shelf and one adjustable shelf, so it can be set for tall bottles on one level and glasses or books on the other; each shelf holds 57 lbs and the top 132 lbs. It stands on a recessed plinth with non-marking glides and needs to be assembled.

It makes a natural bar cabinet, bottles and glasses inside, a shaker and a small plant on top. It is just as useful as a hall cabinet with a dish for keys, or beside a reading chair as a hutch for books and records, fitting where a sideboard would crowd the room. The pale wood suits a relaxed coastal house: woven baskets, sea-washed blues, a sandy jute rug and a framed seascape above.