Young Spanish designer Jaime Hayon is making me relive a particularly bad English class from graduate school where I had to memorize British royal history for four centuries. Yes, I shall never forget the meaning of interregnum, but Hayon’s Tudor Cabinet predates that political fiasco by at least a century. The Tudors ruled from 1485 to 1603, and besides a fair share of familial squables, gave us the Tudor style of architecture, a vertically-oriented, ornate look replete with oriel windows and squat arches.

Tudor Cabinet. Designed by Jaime Hayon for Established & Sons.

Thankfully, Hayon’s tribute to the period is less mannered and much simpler. While he did mimic some of the Tudor geometry, including diamonds (which always seem regal to me due to the suit in playing cards), Hayon abandoned the heavy stone of the period for smooth wood. The doors of his Tudor Cabinets do employ glass insets, little bevelled and colored lozenges that harken back to those English Royals. The details in Hayon’s Tudor Collection boil down the architectural characteristics of old, leaving only a trace–much better than being overpowered by the original. Like a good perfumer, Hayon uses a strong base note and forgoes a multitude of top notes.

Thanks to Designboom‘s coverage of Milan Design Week 2009, we have great photographs of the Tudor Cabinets. Designed for British company Established and Sons, the Tudor Cabinet has not yet made its way to the pages of their website. Nor has the cabinet appeared in Jaime Hayon’s own cyber pages. Like Hayon’s earlier Tudor Chairs, a series of six designs inspired by the wives of Henry VIII, the Tudor Cabinet takes its cue from British history. Hayon admits that moving to England created in him a fascination for the Tudor king: “What a great story! One large man and six unlucky ladies.” When Established and Sons asked him to design something for them, Hayon picked “an English story for an English company.” The Tudor Cabinet continues the Tudor Collection. If the two pieces are any indication of what’s to come, then let’s hope the “despotic, hedonistic, passionate” King Henry VIII continues to inpire the Spaniard.