antique sideboards and dressers.
The antique oak dresser which started from the 17th century, is an essential piece of cabinet furniture and was fashionable in dining rooms of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a piece of furniture which has undergone the most evolutionary change.
In its earliest design of a sideboard was a decorative table on which the host could display has best silver, but after the 1770s designs were published with pairs of pedestals. These were practical as well as decorative additions; confirmed by A Hepplewhite & Co in 1788 when they pointed out that ‘one pedestal serves as a plate warmer’ while the other ‘is used as a pot cupboard.’ This arrangement, with the knife urns on top of the pedestals and a wine cellarets under the top or in a drawer, remained popular in grad houses until the end of the century. At the same time, in less grand dining rooms a new type of sideboard became fashionable, it combined all the component of the above but combined into a single piece of antique furniture. They have deep drawers or cupboards on either side which hold wine bottles with lead-lineing, while a shallow drawer in the centre served for storage of linen. There was sometimes small drawer or cupboard at the back of the piece, for the concealment of the chamber pot which the gentlemen would use to relieve themselves without suffering the social inconvenience of having to leave the dining room.
