A low four-door sideboard on a rail-and-leg base. Dovetailed carcase, frame-and-panel doors, a 22 mm solid top with breadboard ends. The drawing below is the one the workshop cuts from.
Baseline 22, tails at 1:6, half pins at the ends.
Tenon 12 × 40, peg Ø8. Hidden lines dashed.
Photograph: the Manai credenza in laurel against a lime-plaster wall, straight on, one door ajar to show the oak shelf. Morning light, a single brass bowl off-centre.
Photograph: the dovetailed corner of the carcase at 1:1, oil still wet, a fingerprint in the corner of the frame.
Pictured in Indian laurel, smoked oil. Brass pulls cast for us in Kumbakonam; the shelves are oak whatever the timber outside.
Dimensions are overall, in millimetres. The depth includes a 15 mm overhang of the top on every side; the carcase itself is 420 mm deep.
A 450 mm wide slab of laurel will move about 3 mm across its width between a Chennai monsoon and a Bengaluru March. Glue it down and it splits; screw it through slotted holes and it slides, and nobody notices. The breadboard ends do the same job along the front edge, held on with a stub tenon and two slotted screws.
The carcase is dovetailed at every corner because that joint gets stronger as the wood moves, not weaker. It is also the slowest thing we do: a corner of seven tails takes Kumar about forty minutes with a saw and two chisels. We have never had one come back.
Want to see how it sits with a table and six chairs? Put it in a room plan.