Inlaid Chest of Drawers
A chest of drawers whose surfaces carry decorative inlay, from a single line of boxwood stringing to full floral marquetry, made to hold clothes and linen.
What Is An Inlaid Chest Of Drawers?
The heading covers two quite different populations. Roughly half is English: mahogany chests of drawers, straight or bow-fronted, four or five drawers deep, described in titles as two-over-three, three-over-three or "four height". Mahogany is named in almost half of all titles, and Georgian and Edwardian are the labels that recur most.
About a quarter is Continental. Nearly one title in five calls the piece a commode rather than a chest of drawers, and 65 of those specify a marble top. French is the commonest origin after English, with Italian and Dutch behind it, and shapes run from serpentine through to bombé, swelling in two planes.
Walnut carries the earlier tradition: William and Mary, Queen Anne and George I chests with seaweed, arabesque and floral marquetry, oyster veneer, herringbone and feather banding. Walnut appears in around one title in seven, and sits at the top of the range rather than the middle of it.
Beyond the standard chest sit tallboys, chest-on-chests, Wellington and secretaire chests, semainiers and campaign chests, plus small and miniature examples in amboyna, satinwood and marquetry. Nineteen titles offer pairs or near-pairs, which dealers name every time.
Where The Range Splits
Decoration does most of the work. The lower half of the range reads line inlay, boxwood inlay, ebony inlay, chequered inlay: a fine contrasting line and little else. The upper half reads floral marquetry, seaweed, arabesque, parquetry. Marquetry appears in 83 titles and clusters at the top.
Shape and timber follow the same direction. Serpentine and bombé fronts concentrate in the upper part of the range while plain and bow fronts fill the lower. Burr and figured walnut, satinwood, kingwood, amboyda, laburnum and burr yew push upward; the cheapest end is almost uniformly plain mahogany or oak.
Age counts for more than anything on the Continental side, where a marble top and ormolu mounts lift a commode within its own group. Across the whole category, though, it is the 17th and early 18th century walnut work that holds nearly every position at the very top, with Edwardian mahogany gathered at the bottom.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for inlaid chest of drawers, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
One-offs that have surfaced just once: a chest with pewter and ivory marquetry, one with conch shell inlay, and one with horn handles.
The Inlaid Chest of Drawers Glossary
- Stringing
- A fine single line of contrasting wood, usually boxwood or ebony, let into the surface. The commonest form of inlay in this category by a long way.
- Crossbanding
- A border strip of veneer laid with the grain running across the edge, found on drawer fronts and tops.
- Bow front
- A convex curved drawer front, and the most common shaped front here; bow, bow front, bow fronted and bowfront together account for around 70 titles.
- Commode
- The Continental chest of drawers, usually shaped and often marble-topped. Used in 142 titles.
- Bombé
- A front and sides swelling outward in two planes, in 33 titles and almost all of them Continental.
- Semainier
- A tall narrow French chest of seven drawers, one for each day of the week.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many come up for sale each year?
Around 83 inlaid chests of drawers are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, and 185 different dealers have handled one. That is among the widest dealer bases of any single furniture form on the site.
So the supply is steady rather than concentrated in a handful of specialists.
What period do they date from?
The dated field runs from 1700 to 1960. A handful of sampled pieces are attributed earlier still, the earliest reading circa 1660, circa 1680 and circa 1690.
Only 273 of 756 listings carry a clean year. The largest groups are broad buckets instead: 19th Century, Georgian, 18th Century. The same chest may be filed under a reign or under a decade tag such as 1800s or 1920s.
Nothing in the archive is later than 1960.
Is mahogany the usual timber?
Mahogany is named in 356 of 756 titles, so it is the timber you meet most often, usually on an English chest of three to five drawers.
Walnut follows, in around one title in seven, and it dominates the top of the range through William and Mary, Queen Anne and George I marquetry and oyster-veneered chests. Satinwood, kingwood, rosewood, amboyna, laburnum, olive wood and harewood all appear too.
What does commode mean in these titles?
It is the Continental chest of drawers, generally shaped and often fitted with a marble top. The word appears in 142 titles, and 65 of those name the marble.
French is the commonest origin in that group, with Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Spanish, German and Austrian examples also named.
Which forms other than plain chests turn up?
Tallboys, chest-on-chests, chests on stands, pillar chests, Wellington chests, secretaire chests, semainiers and campaign chests all appear as a steady minor stream.
Small chests are named in 51 titles, and miniature or apprentice-scale examples surface now and then in amboyna, satinwood and marquetry, one of them dated on the piece itself to 1907.
Do pairs of inlaid chests exist?
Nineteen titles offer pairs or near-pairs. Matched chests are unusual enough that dealers put the word in the title whenever they have them.
Everything else in the category is sold singly.