Mystery! Floating rosewood credenza with very unusual hidden by-pass doors...???????????

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staceyneil

(@staceyneil)

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06/04/2017 3:25 pm

I'm totally stumped! We just got this wall-hung sideboard at auction. The interior construction looks American. (Or at least not Danish.) The strangest thing is the doors. They appear all flush, but when you press on the non-handle edge, the track pivots to allow the door to slide behind its neighbor. I've never seen anything like this.

Has anyone else?

Thanks!

Stacey
<img class="wpforoimg" src=" http://d1t1u890k7d3ys.cloudfront.net/cdn/farfuture/nQhieiQ2dqQEjGsgg5Y

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mgee76

(@mgee76)

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07/04/2017 7:49 am

I studied that listing to try and figure out what was going on with it... very interesting!

I have drawn many designs for such a system, but of course they were all bad. Please post some pictures of how, exactly, it works when you receive it?

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staceyneil

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14/04/2017 1:37 am

Well, I found out a little about the door system. It's made by Mulray Products. here is an excerpt from Popular Mechanics magazine from 1956:

Now you can quickly

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mgee76

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17/04/2017 8:05 am

Fascinating. And damn, seems like they are long out of production. I'd love to see some more pictures.

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mgee76

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17/04/2017 8:06 am

Like it seems as though there is only one track, and the doors are able to bypass each other through the switch in the middle, right? Hmmm.

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leif ericson - Zephyr Renner

(@leif-ericson)

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17/04/2017 8:10 am

Some photos of the construction in general would be interesting. And for what it's worth, usually one-off construction can be spotted by little details here and there.

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staceyneil

(@staceyneil)

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17/04/2017 4:41 pm

mgee76, each door's track pivots on one point when the non-handle edge is pushed in, so it can go behind the other door. I'll try to remember to take a video of it the next time I am at my studio where it is.

leif, I'll try to take some more photos, too. My husband (and the auctioneer) thought it was very Probber-ish. I've also seen some Wormley/Dunbar pieces with similar build. it also feels like some Founders pieces we've had.

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