Garouste & Bonetti’s Cabinets
Few designers have explored the cabinet as extensively as Élizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti. Between 1986 and the early 2000s, whether working independently or as a duo, they designed numerous cabinets, constantly reinventing this typology through new materials, forms, and references.
At a time when design was defined by the rejection of ornament and the authority of minimalism, Garouste & Bonetti chose the opposite path. Their cabinets are theatrical and at times disconcerting. Often described as the “new barbarians” of French design, they developed an immediately recognizable visual language in which mythology, historical references, and traditional craftsmanship became the raw material of the imagination. Drawing equally from ancient civilizations, nature, the Baroque, and a fully embraced sense of kitsch, their universe renewed the decorative arts of the late twentieth century.
The cabinet occupies a particularly important place in their work. Most of these models were produced by Néotù, the gallery founded by Pierre Staudenmeyer, which supported the duo’s work from the mid-1980s onward. Behind a simple function: opening, closing, storing, they developed a singular vocabulary. Terracotta, oxidized metal, wrought iron, bronze, porcelain, and precious woods come together in often unexpected combinations. Even the locking mechanisms are carefully considered: handles, ironwork, and locks all play a fundamental role in the design of the cabinet, giving each piece its own identity.
The first cabinets, produced during the 1980s and the early 1990s, favor restrained tones combined with raw, oxidized materials. The Rhinocéros Cabinet (1986), Collerette Cabinet (1986), Cabinet 90 (1990), and Sélinonte Cabinet (1991), all designed by Élizabeth Garouste, together with the Cabinet Musique (1990), created by the duo Élizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti, reflect their fascination with archaic forms and ancient civilizations. Despite the diversity of their references, the construction of each cabinet remains highly controlled, with particular attention given to symmetry and ornament (spikes, horns, twisted or hammered metal).
The Cabinet de Sèvres (1989), designed by Élizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti in collaboration with the Manufacture de Sèvres, also reflects the diversity of their production. Combining lacquered wood and porcelain, it adopts a simpler composition in which color plays a central role.
Garouste & Bonetti did not design objects simply to furnish interiors. They created entire worlds. Every commission became an opportunity to extend their visual language into a new geography and a new story. Between 1993 and 1995, the duo was commissioned to design the residence of Sir Po-shing and Lady Helen Woo in Hong Kong, influential patrons and art collectors. Among the pieces created for the residence were two cabinets intended for a bedroom. Their floral panels remind us how deeply nature remained a constant source of inspiration throughout Garouste & Bonetti’s work.
At the end of the 1990s, in 1998, the duo created several colorful cabinets that marked a transition toward the style they would embrace in the 2000s. One such example is the Cabinet Enfer (1998), clad in unsettling black panels pierced with red spikes.
From the early 2000s onward, several of their creations were produced by Mouvements Modernes. This period also marks an evolution in their visual language. Color becomes more prominent and gilding appears more frequently. The Cabinet Feuilles (1999), designed with Mattia Bonetti, together with the Géométrique Cabinet (2006) and the Cabinet aux Anneaux (2006), created by Élizabeth Garouste, illustrate this evolution while preserving the same attention to craftsmanship and the singularity of detail.
Far more than simple storage furniture, Garouste & Bonetti’s cabinets embody an enduring sense of mystery. Where modernism sought to simplify forms, they chose instead to enrich them, turning each cabinet into a work open to multiple interpretations.
From which geographies, periods, and cultures did Garouste & Bonetti construct their universe? More than twenty years after their creation, these cabinets continue to inspire that question.
