Is a pot cupboard the same as a bedside cabinet?

On Sellingantiques the terms cover the same object. Half of the 489 titles use 'bedside', a quarter say 'cabinet', and 'night stand', 'night table' and 'pedestal cupboard' appear on the same form. The difference is history rather than shape. The cupboard was made to hold a chamber pot behind a door; once plumbing arrived the object stayed and the name shifted.

What wood are they usually made from?

Mahogany dominates. It appears in 236 of 489 titles, and 'victorian mahogany' alone accounts for 56 of them. After that, oak and pine each turn up in about thirty titles, with burr walnut in seventeen and satinwood in twelve. Flame mahogany, birds eye maple, amboyna, kingwood and rosewood appear further up the range.

How common are pairs?

The word 'pair' appears in 94 titles, roughly one in five, so singles outnumber pairs by about four to one. Pairs cluster at the top of the range. Several are described as matched, near or closely matched pairs, meaning two cupboards brought together rather than made together.

Why do so many listings say only 19th Century?

Because that is how dealers date them. '19th Century' covers 98 listings and 'Victorian' another 90, and only 155 of 489 give a clean year. Read those tags as a band of decades. The full dealer-entered run stretches from 1750 to 1930, with one outlier labelled before 1700.

Are round or cylindrical ones unusual?

They are a small but real population. Cylindrical accounts for 19 titles and cylinder for ten, with circular, octagonal and oval carcases making up the rest of something under a tenth of the category. Round-bodied and other unusual shapes recur among the dearer entries, alongside serpentine, bowfront and corner forms.

Which pot cupboards are French?

French origin shows in 47 titles, about nine in a hundred, and marble tops in 38. The two go together often enough to read as one group. Other origins are much thinner. Danish, Swedish and Hungarian pieces surface only once or twice across the whole run, with single Dutch, Italian and Irish examples.