Antique Mahogany Cupboards between £0 and £0
Mahogany case furniture with doors, from small hanging corner cupboards and bedside pot cupboards up to full-height two-part linen and clothes presses, each form shaped by the room and the job it was made for.
What You're Looking At
The heading covers three centres of gravity. Bedside pieces are the largest strand at 725 titles, taking in pot cupboards, night stands, pedestals and commodes. Linen and clothes presses account for around a fifth. Corner cupboards, hanging and standing, make up about an eighth.
A bedside piece is the most likely encounter. Bow-fronted and rectangular examples dominate, with tray tops appearing in 61 titles. Cylindrical, oval, hexagonal and kidney-shaped bedsides turn up repeatedly but thinly. Around a sixth of all titles offer a pair, usually matching or matched bedsides, so pairs are routine rather than exceptional on Sellingantiques.
Mahogany came into general English cabinet use in the eighteenth century, and the forms follow the rooms they served: two-part presses for folded linen and clothes, corner cupboards to use the awkward angle of a room, small bedside cupboards for a chamber pot, candle or water jug.
Georgian labelling dominates the dated field, with George III named often, and 18th Century adding nearly two hundred more. Nineteenth-century pieces are split across 19th Century, Victorian, Regency and 1800s, so the mid-century total is larger than any single figure looks. Edwardian and 1920s pieces are well represented too. Much of that field is a period label rather than a year, and the samples carry contradictions, so read a period in a title as the dealer's opinion.
Where The Range Splits
Form does most of the work. The upper end of the sampled range is held by presses and the estate and housekeeper's cupboards, with a breakfront press and an eighteenth-century press cupboard at the very top. Single Edwardian bedside and pot cupboards fill the bottom, and small nineteenth-century cupboards sit under them.
Pairing lifts a piece well above its single equivalent. Sampled pairs of bedsides, pedestals and cabinets sit far above the same form on its own, which is why 480 titles lead with the word.
Then timber and decoration. Inlay appears in 198 titles, flame mahogany in 94 and figured in 65, and the highest sampled pieces are the profusely inlaid, the marquetry and the satinwood-banded. A named or attributed firm pushes upward as well, and so does an early claimed date, with eighteenth-century and George III labels concentrated at the top.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for mahogany cupboards between £0 and £0, 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.
The dated field on Sellingantiques runs from 1750 to 1960 for mahogany cupboards, better than two centuries in one category.
Gillows·Holland & Sons·Maple & Co
The Antique Mahogany Cupboards between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Linen press
- A two-part cupboard, doored top over a base of drawers, made for folded linen. It carries the single largest form label after the bedside strand, with 456 titles.
- Pot cupboard
- A small bedside cupboard, originally for a chamber pot. The word appears in 140 titles, often interchangeably with bedside cabinet or night stand.
- Tray top
- A gallery or raised rim around the top of a bedside cupboard or commode, in 61 titles.
- Bow front
- A convex curved front, and the commonest shape after plain rectangular. Bow, bow front and bow fronted together run through several hundred titles.
- Commode
- In this category usually a bedside cupboard enclosing a pot rather than a French chest of drawers. 62 titles use it.
- Dwarf press
- A press of reduced height, described in the samples as dwarf or low. Breakfront and bowfront presses appear in the same way.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a linen press?
A two-part cupboard: a doored top section standing on a base of drawers, made for folded linen. Clothes press describes the same form for clothing, and 41 titles use that word instead.
Presses account for about a fifth of the category, and the samples include dwarf, low, bowfront and breakfront versions.
How often do bedside cupboards come as pairs?
Pairs appear in 480 titles, about a sixth of everything listed, and in the samples they are mostly matching or matched bedsides.
Pedestals and side cabinets also turn up in twos. A pair sits well above the single equivalent in the same range.
Which form turns up most?
The bedside piece, by a clear margin. 725 titles carry the word, supported by cabinet, bedside chests, bedside cupboards and pot.
After that come presses at around a fifth of the category, then corner cupboards at about an eighth.
Are the dates in the titles reliable?
Treat them as the dealer's opinion. Only 773 of the listings carry a clean year at all; the rest use period labels like Georgian, 19th Century or 1800s, which name no year.
The samples show contradictions too, such as a George III tray top dated to the seventeenth century.
The dated field as a whole spans 1750 to 1960.
Do corner cupboards hang on the wall or stand?
Both, and they divide neatly. Hanging appears in 77 titles, hanging corner in 56, and bow front corner in another 56.
Standing, two-part and glazed standing examples run separately through the samples.
What are the unusual pieces in this category?
The trade and institutional ones. The samples include a ships' pennants cabinet, a watch and clock repairer's chest, a chemist's wall cabinet, a haberdashery press and an estate cabinet with original gilded lettering.
Miniature and apprentice pieces form a small recurring pocket, and they sit near the bottom of the range despite early claimed dates.