How many tambour cabinets come up each year?

Around 21 reach the market on Sellingantiques in a year, and 58 different dealers have listed one. That spread tells you something. The form is scattered thinly across the trade rather than held by a few specialists in office furniture.

Why are so many of them from the 1920s?

The tambour front suited offices. A shutter needs no clearance in front of it, so a cabinet could stand in a crowded room and still open. Office suppliers took the idea up on a large scale. Of the dated listings, 97 fall in the 1920s, with 32 in the 1910s, 28 in the 1930s and 20 in the 1900s. Another 27 are given only as Edwardian.

What does French oak mean in these titles?

It marks a Continental office strand large enough to count as a sub-market. "French" appears in 80 titles and "French oak" in 48. The sampled French cabinets run the full range of formats, from single-bank through double to triple, usually in pale to mid oak.

Are tambour cabinets always filing cabinets?

Not always, but usually. Two thirds of all titles say "filing" or "file", so the word tambour on this site nearly always signals an office piece. The rest are domestic: Georgian and nineteenth-century mahogany bedside cabinets, commodes and night stands, with occasional music, wall and cocktail cabinets alongside.

Do dates in the listings mean exact years?

Sometimes. 191 of 249 listings carry a clean year, and the field runs 1800 to 1940. The earlier material is looser. 14 listings say only "19th Century", 7 say "1800s", 4 "18th Century" and 3 "Georgian", which are period labels rather than precise years. Dealers also mix the two schemes, so "Edwardian" and "1910" can describe the same cabinet.

Which unusual tambour pieces have turned up?

A few one-offs appear once and nowhere else. A nineteenth-century walnut conductor's cabinet with a reading slope, an ebonised tambour music cabinet and a serpentine-fronted example. Others include a Dutch marquetry-inlaid tambour bedside table and a walnut Art Deco tambour cocktail cabinet.

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Antique Tambour Cabinets

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A cabinet closed by a tambour, a shutter of narrow slats that rolls back into the carcass instead of swinging open, used most often on early twentieth-century office filing cabinets.