A studio taboret is storage furniture for a fine artist, sometimes topped with an easel or worksurface. Painter Casey Childs was dissatisfied with the taborets on the market—units sold by art supply stores are little more than a collection of cheap drawers—so he set about designing his own.

The result is Childs' Better Taboret Deluxe Studio Edition, a sturdy piece of furniture studded with functional details. A roughly 2'x2' sheet of glass up top provides a large palette area for mixing paints, with a neutral grey vinyl surface below it to allow color accuracy. A row of notches along the rear allow the user to set wet brushes down with the tips suspended over the edge.

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A hinged cover to the side of the palette flips open to provide more table-height spaces and reveals a series of recesses. The round ones hold drop-in cups for holding paints or solvents, while the rectangular ones are meant to hold towels, palette knives, random tools, and even the standard-sized phone books and old catalogs some painters use as refreshable brush-wiping surfaces.

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A sliding panel to the other side of the palette provides access to the pull-out trash bin concealed beneath the worksurface.

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Just below the worksurface is a pull-out tray, for when the user needs some extra real estate.

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Beneath the pull-out tray are large, shallow drawers on full extension slides. Inside are user-adjustable dividers perfectly sized to store both large and small tubes of paint, single-layered, so the user does not have to dig to locate a particular tube. To the side are additional shelves for storage.

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Lastly, the unit is sturdy. Childs has eschewed particleboard and plywood, going instead with solid oak.

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The Deluxe goes for about $5,000, and you can read some reviews of the desk here.