Can you keep a secret? Paul Ranucci of Auburn can, and so can his furniture.

Ranucci crafts wooden tables and sideboards with secret compartments. These drawers are not visible at first look.

“I was making a gate leg table for my niece for her wedding and I was inspired to make a hidden drawer,” he said. The greater inspiration for the secret compartments comes from an antique, tiger oak sideboard he refinished. Hidden compartments were discovered in what most people would recognize as ornamental trim.

“The compartments had a lot of money hidden in them … like mattress money. Of course when I bought it, the money was not there any more,” Ranucci said.

Ranucci, who works full time in health care administration, said the hidden compartments appeal to him because they are unique.

“I like the novelty a lot. You take mission style tables and add hidden compartments and the novelty of it makes it a little more unique,” he said.

He has tables of pine in a clear mahogany finish, a side table with ornamental details that serve as the secret to his hidden drawer design, and yet another mission style sofa table with the mystery “key” incorporated into the design.

Ranucci credits his creativity and artistic bent to his grandfather, Giuseppe Ranucci, an Italian immigrant who invented the first patented design for ornamental macaroni in 1925. He proudly displays both a “Bowery Boys” photo of his grandfather and friends in the Bronx, New York, and a photo taken after his grandfather’s rise to fortune.

“I guess his creativity is where I got my designing from,” Ranucci said.

As for his secrets, Ranucci will keep a few well hidden.

“There’s always something you want to keep hidden,” he said with a sly smile.

To see more of Ranucci’s secrets, visit http://www.furniturebygiuseppe.com.