ANTIQUE COURT CUPBOARDS WITH ENCLOSED SHELVES
About 1610-1800
Aprestigious item in the 17thC, much less so in the 18thC, when it was only country-made. Used for displaying and storing food and plates, cups, in the hall (later in the parlour) where meals were taken. Originally made without locks, therefore not intended to contain valuable items. Earliest surviving [...]

ANTIQUE COURT CUPBOARDS WITH OPEN SHELVES (BUFFETS)
About 1570-1680
Apiece of furniture derived from medieval prototypes, comprising a set of three open shelves, which in grand houses was draped with fabric or carpet and used to display plate, but in lesser homes could be used as a side-table. The names buffet, court cupboard, sideboard and dresser were [...]

COURT CUPBOARDS  closed base
Most furniture of any height has a moulding round the top. Many court cupboards do not, or just very shallow ones. This seems to have caused a degree of embarrassment to generations of connoisseurs and dealers with the result that many now appear to have ‘later top moulding’. One should not be [...]

COURT CUPBOARDS  open base
Well-turned and carved melons (cup and cover). Again, note that the pattern does not need to match, also the box or holly and ebony inlay on the base appears in a mild form on the top of the two drawers. These were used as Tudor status symbols which could be employed to [...]

COURT CUPBOARDS
Nomenclature in antiques is as much subject to confusion as it is to snobbery. The word ‘buffet’, which has connotations of sideboards loaded with cold sandwiches or of damp railway stations, is not used by the cognoscenti to describe those open-shelved, bulbously supported pieces shown in this section. They are called court cupboards. There [...]

Court Cupboards
1. All timbers of same age, colour, patination, distinctly hardened with age and smoke from wood fires.
2. Adze marks on chamfered panels on insides of doors  they should not be smooth-planed.
3. Base showing considerable signs of damage from kicking, knocks from brooms, and damp.
4. No locks on doors originally: these cupboards were accessible to [...]