What is a court cupboard?

An early oak form with an open or partly enclosed tiered structure. Court appears in fifteen titles. Some sampled titles attribute court cupboards as far back as the 1580s, earlier than the dated field on Sellingantiques runs. That dating is the dealer's own.

Which timbers turn up most?

Oak, mahogany and pine dominate, each in roughly a fifth of titles, with cabinet the single commonest word overall. Walnut appears too, often as burr walnut veneer, along with satinwood, birds eye maple, kingwood, rosewood and Scandinavian birch.

Are painted cupboards common in this category?

Painted work runs through the listings, with painted in seventy-two titles and paint in fifty-four. Much of it is Continental: Swedish, Scandinavian, Baltic, Hungarian, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and Irish. Scandinavian painted work is the most distinctive non-British origin here and sits consistently in the upper half of the range.

How old are most storage cupboards listed?

The dated field runs from 1700 to 1940, with 269 listings carrying a clean year. The bulk is nineteenth century and Georgian. About half the dating is a bracket rather than a date, with era labels like "19th Century" and reign labels like "Victorian" standing in for a year. Tighter decade tags cluster in the twentieth century, the 1920s especially.

Do unusual one-off cupboards appear?

Regularly. Sampled titles include a smokers' cupboard, a railway ticket cupboard, a dug-out oak metamorphic cupboard and a window-seat boot cupboard. Trade and medical pieces show up as well: a dentist's instrument case, a set of seven small medical carrying chests, and a skeleton cupboard complete with skeleton.

Are cupboards ever sold in pairs?

Yes, and more often than you'd expect. Pair appears in forty titles. They run from bedside and pedestal cabinets through to matched eighteenth-century Italian walnut corner cupboards, and a pair carries well above the equivalent singles.

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Antique Storage Cupboards

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A door-fronted wooden cupboard made to hold food, linen, clothes or household goods, from a small hanging corner cupboard to a full-height two-part housekeeper's cupboard.