Antique Cupboard

Antique American Cupboard

CUPBOARDS: PRESS AND COURT CUPBOARDS
About 1670-1700
Oak court cupboard, 1670-1680.
0riginally, a cupboard was literally a Cup Board - an open, three•tiered side table for displaying silver cups. The earliest American examples date from after 1670 and are partly enclosed with panels and doors - cupboards in the modern sense - but clearly meant as status symbols. Known variously as ‘press’ or ‘court’ cupboards Late Renaissance style. Heavy turnings support tiers. Arrangement of doors and drawers between tiers varies. In some examples, the whole of the lower stage is enclosed and closely resembles the front of a chest (see CHESTS, 1620-1740 p. 305).
Oak, pine, curly maple.
Panelled, mortise-and-tenon joints. Drawers,if any, crudely dovetailed. Built in two stages, upper and lower. Each support, however bulky, turned from one piece of wood - not built up - with a dowel at each end for socketing into hole in cornice above and ledge below.
Carving: Strapwork in the manner of T. Dennis, Ipswich, Massachusetts; tulips, sunflowers.
Applied: Geometric mouldings, split banister turnings.
Handles: Wooden knobs, round or turtleback (see CHESTS p. 306).
Oiled and waxed. Applied decoration often stained black.
Prices very high for authentic American examples. English and Welsh types offer a cheaper alternative if patriotism permits.
Turned and dowelled support for cornice. ice.
FAKES
Fakers of American types have been known to re-carve the four legs of a Victorian dining-table and set them around cupboards made up of old panelling decorated with split banister turnings, new but camouflaged with black stain.
DUTCH KAS CUPBOARDS
About 1770-1850
The kas, a Dutch-American version of the Netherlands kast: Full-length cupboard made in New York and New Jersey for more than 100 years.
Painted pine schrank, about 1780.
Baroque, with heavily moulded cornice and turned ball feet.
Door of kas, arched and felded panels.
Fruitwood, gumwood, walnut, pine.
Panelled, the panels often arched and fielded. Usually two or three drawers in base.
Mouldings around panels.
Many painted with still life subjects of fruit and flowers en grisaille (tones of grey), within trompe Poed panels.
Examples with good, original grisaille decoration expensive. Plain, late-18th or early-I 9thC examples are buyable. Old but plain pine cupboards, often imported from Europe, are given the grisaille treatment by skilled decorators who tend to copy the fruit painted on the doors of a well-known museum example.
CUPBOARDS: FRENCH ARMOIRE
About 1680-1800
Mainly French Canadian, but influence felt along Mississippi to New Orleans.
CUPBOARDS: CORNER CUPBOARDS AND CABINETS
About 1720-1850
Above, carved panel, typical of mid-18MC French rococo armoires and boiseries.
Louis XIII-XV. See p. 210.
Canadian examples usually pine. As in France.
Plainer types with shaped panels but no carving can be very good value.
Above, painted and grained federal corner cupboard, Pennsylvania, about 1810.
Unglazed types known as cupboards, glazed ones as cabinets, but the terms tend to be interchangeable.
Rural versions made with little change over long period. Sophisticated types adapted slowly to changing fashions.
Oak, pine, walnut, maple, mahogany.
Some single door width, some double. Both types include the following variations:
I Full-length, standing: Wooden door(s) above and below. Doors panelled.
2 Glazed door(s) above, wood door(s) below. Wood doors panelled, glazed doors before 1800 always composed of separate panes puttied into a framework of glazing bars (astragals).
3 Wood or glazed doors above, or open shelves often framed with cyma scrolls; wood doors below. Arched, architectural types built in.
4 Wood doors.
S Glazed door(s), glazing bars as in 2 above.
6 Open shelves, often cyma-scrolled as in 3 above.
7 Bow-fronted wood doors.
Full-length types sometimes made in two stages, sometimes in one piece. Backs; boards (tongued-and-grooved from early 19thC), nailed on.
A ‘blind’ door is often converted to a glazed one by replacing it with glass – a time-consuming process if done correctly with small panes. A short cut is taken by glueing strips of moulding to a single sheet of glass – easy to see if a careful examination is made. Large sheets of glass were not used for cases until about 1800, and only complex, curved astragals were glued on.
Painted and grained corner cabinet, about 1810.
Geometric mouldings on doors of early oak cupboards. Later rural types usually plain. Architectural, arched type usually has a rounded back and ‘umbrella’ top that is either ribbed or, in exceptionally fine examples, carved with a large shell; this type is flanked by a pair of fluted pilasters crowned with classical capitals. Some mahogany Chippendale types carved with rococo scrolls. In Federal period, more often decorated with neo-classical motifs in marquetry.
Architectural types in pine often painted to match woodwork of room. Pennsylvania, 1820-50, grained effects and swirling patterns in sponged and spattered paint.
It has been said that, if you furnish the corners of a room, the centre will look after itself. It is worth paying a fairly high price fora good cupboard that will bring an awkward corner to I ife.
MARRIAGES
A full-length corner cupboard in two parts may be a marriage of two hanging ones – a glass-fronted one above and a wood (’blind’) door below. Check that the grain of the wood follows through, i.e. that there is consistency in the materials top and bottom.
Above, front uiew of glazed door, glazing bars mitred into frame. Right, rear view of glazed door, bars tenoned into flame and separate panes fitted into bars.
CUPBOARDS: DISH DRESSERS
Right, simple painted dresser, Pennsylvania, early-19thC
Country sideboards: Regional variations of a cupboard base with a rack of open shelves above.
Oak, pine, any suitable local wood.
Oak: Usually panelled.
Pine: Carcase often boarded (planks nailed to frame).
Base of dresser, boarded construction,
Shaping of rack-ends and sometimes of frieze below cornice.
Painted, waxed or left raw.
Surprisingly expensive when compared with average quality of the sophisticated equivalent, e.g. a good but not important mahogany sideboard of the late Empire period.
REPLACEMENT RACKS
The rack of a dresser may not belong originally to the base. If it does not, it will probably have been reduced in width to achieve a good fit. Examine the shelves where they join the ends for signs of recent cutting – slightly open joints with raw edges that may be camouflaged with vacuum cleaner dust mixed with glue, forming a kind of cement. Even the oldest encrusted dust is not as hard as that.

CABINETS, CUPBOARDS AND ARMOIRES
17thC Flemish table cabinet veneered with tortoiseshell and inlaid with bone.
Interiors fitted with small drawers set around miniature cupboard. Doors, if any, panelled or flush. Stands constructed either as cupboards or, more usually, as table-frames; but many cabinets exported from Florence, Antwerp and Augsburg without stands, which were made later at destination.
Cupboards: On early Italian types, carved motifs, e.g. lion masks, at centres of panels (often three to each door). The 17thC German Schrank relied mainly on arrangements of mouldings, sometimes with carved details or a central panel of marquetry. Finest late-17thC French armoires decorated with boulle marquetry – patterns cut out in veneer, or brass inlaid into turtleshell ground.
XIV French armoire with superb wood marquetry in the style of Bou Ile, Cabinets: Florence specialized in pietredure – inlaying drawer-fronts with pictures of birds and flowers in hardstones – lapis, chalcedony, jasper, agate – and marbles, against an ebony-veneered carcase mounted with ormolu. Centre of activity was the Uffizi, under patronage of the Medicis.
At Eger in Bohemia, a highly complicated combination of intarsia and carving was used. Antwerp, Augsburg and Middelburg also decorated drawer-fronts and doors with intarsia, and veneered the sides and top with ebony. Mace, a skilled French craftsman, spent two years at Middelburg about 1620, learning the art of veneering in ebony and returned to Paris to work for the Crown. Louis XIV owned magnificent cabinets, both Italian and, later, French.
Amsterdam was noted for large cabinets decorated with floral marquetry. About 1690, Van Mekeren was the leading maker.
Stands were either turned or, for some of the finest cabinets, richly carved with scrolls, foliage, figures of cherubs, slaves, nymphs or tritons.
East India trading companies brought in cabinets from Japan and China, decorated with figures in gilt on a ground built up with successive coats of lacquer made from sap of a tree (Rhus vernicifera); imitated in Europe by `japanning’with a substitute (gum-lac, seed-lac or shellac). Dutch examples considered best copies. Carved stands were silvered or gilded.
Good examples of the German Schrank now sell at high prices, but bargains in big cupboards from other countries may be found. Highly decorated cabinets very expensive; a pietre dure example was sold in 1990 for £8,580,000 – a world record for any piece of furniture. Simpler types often reasonable in price. Early European copies of oriental lacquer cabinets can cost more than originals.
STANDS
Do not reject a good cabinet because the stand is not obviously ‘original’ – it may well be one of those originally made many hundreds of miles from the birthplace of the cabinet.

EUROPEAN CUPBOARDS AND ARMOIRES About 1725-1775
French provincial armoire made in restrained rococo style.
Cupboards: In France, heavy Louis XIV types gradually give way to lighter rococo style. Doors of armoires have shaped panels matching boiserie (wall panelling); some feature in buffet-bas (sideboard with cupboards and drawers), buffet- vaisselier or dressoir (buffet with rack of shelves above), and buffet-i -de ux- corps (two-stage cupboard with doors above and below). Baroque armoire persists for many years in some regions (Denmark, parts of Germany); in other provincial centres (Liege, Aachen), rococo fully developed.
Cabinets: Baroque cabinet-on-stand goes out of fashion, new version in extreme rococo style developed in Italy, where architect Juvarra designs tall cabinets – lavish carving, gilding and inlay, mounted on cabriole-legged side tables – made by Piffetti of Turin. Rather similar cabinets made in Germany (see also Bureau-Cabinets, under DESKS, p. 252).
French examples more restrained, much lower, e.g. the encoignure– waist-high corner cabinet with door(s) decorated in marquetry. Tall corner cabinets, some bow-fronted, made in Holland, where standard test-piece for cabinet-maker seeking entry into guild is a veneered cabinet mounted on bombe base. Dutch vitrines (display cabinets) have glazed doors and canted ends on cupboard or bombe bases (see CHESTS OF DRAWERS, p. 241).
Provincial: Local timbers, e.g. oak,  walnut and cherry main woods for French armoires and related types; walnut, fruitwood and chestnut in Tuscany and Lombardy; olive, poplar in Sicily.
Sophisticated: Exotic woods for veneering and marquetry, supplemented by mother-of-pearl, ivory, turtleshell. Ormolu handles and mounts.
French provincial fruitwood buffet, mid-18thC.
Inlaid Italian corner cupboard, with bombe base, mid-18thC.
Methods change little for solid cupboards (i.e. not veneered), except for panels of doors (see
FRENCH CANADIAN ARMOIRES, p. 285 for details). For doors and ends of sophisticated cabinets, veneers often matched or quartered (see diagram). The figure in all veneers cut from same piece of wood being virtually identical, if Sheet A is turned over and set edge to edge with Sheet B, a symmetrical, matched pattern is created. Taking the process a step further, if Sheets C and D are similarly treated but also turned upside down, and then set against bottom edges of A and B, a symmetrical, quartered pattern results.
Matched and quartered veneers.
Carving of rococo motifs – C-scrolls, flowers, cherubs – reaches high standard on provincial and sophisticated pieces. On veneered cabinets – marquetry flowers, chinoiseries, landscapes – often partly obscured on drawers by ormolu handles placed with curious disregard for design.
CUPBOARDS AND ARMOIRES
Alpine, Dutch and Scandinavian pine cupboards painted all over with ground colour, then in polychrome with flowers, figures, landscapes, within borders simulating exotic woods or marble. Many French cabinets decorated with chinoiseries or fetes galantesscenes in the Watteau style with vernis Martin (generic term for translucent coloered varnish, originally invented early in the 18thC by four brothers after whom it is named).
Pine Alpine Cupboard, painted, about 1775.
In very wide field, good buys are simpler types of French Provincial armoire and Danish or Alpine cupboards in painted pine, both suitable – with shelves discreetly added to interior if necessary – for use in living-rooms as well as bedrooms.
19thC ARMOIRES
French Provincial armoires and buffets in Louis XV rococo style continued to be made well into the 19thC. Two-stage buffets with large glass panels in doors are usually found to be either 19thC entirely, or l8thC examples that have been modified.

CLOTHES PRESSES AND WARDROBES
Not strictly a press, but this cabinet on chest shows the early stages of evolution. Typical features of the walnut period include quartering of veneers and lip mouldings on the drawer edges.1720-1740
Assuming it is right and not a bottom half with cabinet, and depending on the interior fitting.
A later walnut bookcase on chest with inlaid stringing lines.
A mahogany clothes press on serpentine bracket feet with original swan-neck handles.
Finely figured veneers. Hence high value. 1750-1780
Mahogany clothes press with bracket feet and original handles. The applied mouldings on the doors add to the quality.
A mahogany clothes press with cupboard beneath, on serpentine bracket feet. Cupboards below are less useful and less popular. 1760-1780
A Sheraton style wardrobe with high quality mahogany veneers in oval panels on the doors and two drawers beneath. Inlaid boxwood stringing lines emphasise the design.
An unusual clothes press or wardrobe in which the doors have simulated drawers with black stringing lines let into them. The top moulding is a good example of an arcaded cavetto with dentil above. 1790-1810
An example of a Gothic design of clothes press door using high quality veneers and beaded mouldings. The drawers have matched quartered veneers  unusual in mahogany. 1820-1840
In oak with the medullary rays showing and supported on each side by reeded pilasters. Although the top moulding isn’t very strong it comes forward at the end, a nice touch.
The broken pediment doesn’t quite succeed but the bold shell and well-thought-out stringing lines make this an attractive piece. The Edwardians occasionally ‘improved’ these pieces by adding inlays and a cornice or pediment. c. 1800 according to the quality and condition of the lacquer but beware modern lacquer Veneered in walnut with wide cross-banding and moulding cut along the grain. Well constructed with ovolo mouldings to the doors which gives the piece a more finished appearance.

EARLY ANTIQUE EUROPEAN CUPBOARDS AND ARMOIRES
About 1300-1630
Vertical storage or display pieces with doors, as distinct from chests with lids, made from early Middle Ages onwards.
Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic: Early surviving examples; armoire about 1176, arched doors and ends (Abbey Church of St Etienne, Obazine); sacristy cupboard, about 1200, massive plank construction, painted over coating of gesso with figures of saints (Cathedral Museum, Halberstadt); armoire, about 1240, since altered but originally composed of numerous small compartments, each with its own door (Bayeux Cathedral).
Survivors mostly oak, but other local woods, including soft ones, probably used. Wrought-iron for hinges, scrollwork.
Mortise-and-tenon joints used but planks sometimes pegged to face of frame. Doors are planks joined edge to edge.
Painting over gesso ground. Wrought-iron scrolls nailed to doors on Gothic types.
Survivors in churches and museums  not normally for sale.
The terms cupboard and cabinet are virtually interchangeable as applied to any pieces of this period with doors; armoire, dressoir and buffet are also freely substituted for each other and for their approximate English equivalents.
German marquetry cabinet,about 1610 Gothic and Renaissance: Design affected by Italian Renaissance in 14thC. Ideal described in 15thC as ‘harmony and concord of all the parts’, but Gothic persists in northern Europe. A German cupboard with doors above and below, carved with typical Gothic arches and tracery (National Museum, Munich) was made about same time (1470) as the study in the palace of Urbino, fitted with built-in cupboards matching walls decorated in Renaissance style with intarsia (inlay). A later German cupboard (1541), made to a published design by I is similar in construction to the Munich example, but carved with Renaissance urns in place of Gothic arches. In 16thC Spain, Gothic merges with Renaissance and abstract Moorish patterns are carved on cupboard doors.
Shortly after 1500, Renaissance style promoted in Burgundy; mannerist elements in Sambin’s designs are combined with architectural features in Du Cerceau’s. French armoire-j-deux-corps is a two-door cupboaru at on another, slightly larger. Some French typ. rest on stands with carved or turned supports. By mid-16thC Italy has developed a waist-high sideboard (credenza) with cupboards flanked by columns; heavier version in Netherlands about 1625, also a two-stage cupboard, upper stage smaller than the lower, often with carved figures supporting a canopy.
Local timbers, e.g. oak, walnut in France, walnut and cypress in Italy, lime in southern Germany. Mixture of woods for cupboards meant to be painted. Doors are always wood, never glass (the term ‘cabinet’ might
misleadingly suggest otherwise).
Panels of carcases and doors set in mortisedand-tenoned frames. When on stands, turned or carved supports end in squares with mortises into which rails are tenoned. No glue; joints secured with pegs.
Construction of stand for cabinet Gothic carving: Pointed arches, tracery, birds, animals, linenfold panels.
Renaissance carving: Classical urns with flowers, mannerist grotesques, nude or draped figures with elongated limbs, strap-work or scrolled borders, 16th century oak.
Renaissance: Intarsia; still-life and architectural subjects in wood mosaic, creating trompe loeil effects.
Gothic: Many cupboards vividly painted; highly valued when new and probably kept in closed areas of churches.
Renaissance: Woods stained for intarsia work only. Otherwise oiled, varnished or left in natural state.
Late Gothic cupboards appear on the market at prices within reach of anyone who can afford, as well as or instead of, a good car. Many late Renaissance cupboards sell for less than the price of a second-hand family
saloon.
In 1922, a collection of Italian Renaissance furniture, bought in Victorian times by a national institution, was found to have been largely made up from fragments. Sadly  because the fragments would be worth having  all were destroyed on the orders of an outraged Establishment; but many such pieces are still around.
An oak Court cupboard  no not a buffet  of the early seventeenth century. The shelves at the front are supported by the typical bulbous carved form seen on refectory tables of the period. At the back the flat supports are fluted on the front surface. Variations to be found include human and animal forms such as gryphons acting as front supports. Some pieces show very fine examples of rich carving but on the whole this is not a popular piece of furniture considering its antiquity, due to the modern avoidance of heavy forms.
An oak hall cupboard probably of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A piece of furniture used in halls and living rooms of the seventeenth century which was made on into the eighteenth century by country craftsmen. In the early forms the turned pendants, which appeared in Cromwellian times, were replaced by the turned bulbous pilasters seen on court cupboards and tables of the first half of the seventeenth century.
Baluster forms continued to appear however, as well as turned pendants, until the end of the century. In Wales similar pieces were made on into the mid-eighteenth century but in England they were gradually
superseded from the beginning of the eighteenth century by the farmhouse dresser.

French Cupboards

A walnut cross-banded glazed-door antique French cupboard of c.1725, with broken pediment. It has been suggested that such cupboards became popular at the time to store and display the expensive tea sets then in vogue.
The figure of the walnut veneers is elegantly matched and the moulding on the cornice is gross-grained.
Quality of decoration and veneers
Quality of colour and cross-grained mouldings
A walnut bow-fronted French cupboard with cross-banding, c.1720. Possibly designed to stand on a larger bow-fronted French cupboard. Figure and patination of veneer
Solid walnut bow-fronted French cupboard of c.1730, of country origin. The construction and mouldings are very simple.
Price Range: $60 -$90
Value points: Colour and patination
Size  small  Quality of mouldings
An oak French cupboard of c.1740, with panelled doors banded in mahogany. Cupboards of this style, often as a low stand were made from the beginning of the century onwards but the dentillated top cornice and mahogany decoration indicate the date mentioned. Rather a large form of French cupboard generally.
Mid eighteenth century mahogany French cupboard, c.1750, with broken pediment and panelled doors. The moulding to the cornice is finely executed and the dark figured mahogany in the shaped door panels is rich in colour.
A mid eighteenth century oak bow-fronted French cupboard with fluted pilasters. The H hinges are typical of the type used by country makers, although the pilasters add quality to the piece, c.1750.
Oak bow-fronted country French cupboard with mahogany banding on the doors. Probably of late eighteenth century date. The top moulding is dentillated and there is an inlaid medallion in boxwood and ebony at the top of the flat side surfaces, c.1780.
A late eighteenth century oak French cupboard with a panelled door with three drawers below. Beneath the bold top cornice moulding there is a band of mahogany veneer. The three small drawers suggest that the piece may have been designed for kitchen use although the quality of construction and door panel moulding are of fairly refined craftsmanship. c.1790.
Late eighteenth century mahogany French cupboard with fluted sides and decorated with satinwood inlays. The oval central panel to the door is decorated with a beautifully figured piece of mahogany veneer. The top cornice is dentillated with satinwood inlay and the frieze is also decorated with an inlaid satinwood classical motif, c.1790.