Táas Cabinet
Táas Cabinet is a minimal cabinet designed by Mexico City-based studio EWE Studio. In the soft glow of a Mexico City workshop, brass sheets transform under practiced hands, their surfaces taking on the deep, enigmatic patina that marks EWE Studio’s Táas collection. This moment of metamorphosis – where contemporary design meets pre-Hispanic metallurgical traditions – captures the essence of a studio that has become a vital bridge between Mexico’s rich artisanal heritage and modern design language.
The Táas cabinet and desk emerge from a profound engagement with Mesoamerican metalworking traditions, their name drawing from an ancient word denoting the act of piercing and cutting metal. But rather than merely appropriating historical techniques, EWE Studio, founded in 2017 by Age Salajõe, Manuel Bañó, and Héctor Esrawe, has orchestrated a sophisticated dialogue between past and present.
The collection’s most striking achievement lies in its manipulation of brass, a material deeply embedded in Mexico’s craft history. The pieces are constructed through a series of laminated curves that create an architectural interplay of positive and negative space. These carefully orchestrated voids serve both functional and aesthetic purposes, transforming what could have been merely storage furniture into sculptural statements that seem to shift and evolve as one moves around them.
What distinguishes the Táas collection is its ability to honor traditional techniques while pushing them into new territorial expressions. The stepped geometries and flowing curves speak to pre-Hispanic design vocabularies, but their execution is decidedly contemporary. The patinated brass surfaces create a temporal ambiguity – at once ancient and modern – while the interplay of concealed and revealed spaces echoes Mesoamerican architectural principles of mystery and revelation.
The studio’s approach represents a significant evolution in the relationship between artisanal craft and contemporary design. Rather than treating traditional techniques as static artifacts to be preserved, EWE demonstrates how they can be dynamic tools for innovation. This philosophy manifests in the pieces’ construction, where traditional metalworking methods are adapted to create forms that would have been impossible in pre-Hispanic times, yet feel spiritually connected to that era.
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