Art Nouveau Dressing Tables between £0 and £0
A mirrored bedroom table or chest with drawers for toilet articles, dressed in the stylised plant forms and flowing lines of the turn of the century.
What Are Art Nouveau Dressing Tables?
The dressing table was already a settled bedroom piece long before this style reached it: a table or chest with a mirror and drawers for toilet articles. The Art Nouveau version takes that form and applies the whiplash and stylised-plant vocabulary of the 1890s and 1900s to it. Ordinary domestic furniture, commonly made as part of a bedroom suite.
The piece you are most likely to meet on Sellingantiques is mahogany and dated c1890. Mahogany is named in five of the six sampled titles; walnut appears exactly once. The category is small, the titles are bare, and late Victorian English cabinet work dominates it.
Two of the six are called a "dressing table chest", which means the chest-of-drawers form with the mirror mounted above the top, rather than a kneehole table between pedestals. One title names the mirror on its own account.
The dates sit in a narrow twenty-year window. Only two listings carry a clean year, 1890 and 1910; the rest are filed under "Victorian", a reign rather than a date. There is no earlier tail and no later one, and the 1910 entry is the single French piece.
Where The Range Sits
Timber and form do most of the sorting. The walnut dressing table chest sits above three of the mahogany pieces, so the less common timber counts for something. But form counts for more in the other direction: both chest-form titles fall in the lower half of the sampled range, while the full dressing table sits above them.
Origin lifts a piece. The one French mahogany example, dated 1910, sits at the top of the range, with everything else in the group reading as English. It shares that top position with the single title that names the mirror explicitly, which suggests a dressing table where the mirror is worth describing rather than assuming.
Beyond timber and date, these titles give little away. No term recurs often enough to register as a defining feature, and no maker, cabinetmaker or retailer is named anywhere in the group. What separates one from another is the wood, the form, and whether the mirror earns a mention.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for art nouveau dressing tables 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.
Some are the chest form rather than the table form, listed on Sellingantiques as a dressing table chest.
The Art Nouveau Dressing Tables between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Dressing table
- A bedroom table or chest with a mirror and drawers for toilet articles.
- Dressing table chest
- The chest-of-drawers form of the same thing, with the mirror mounted above the top rather than a kneehole between pedestals. Two of the titles here use it.
- Art Nouveau
- The turn-of-the-century decorative style of stylised plant forms and flowing lines. On these pieces it describes the decoration applied to a conventional bedroom form.
- c1890
- Short for "circa 1890", an approximate date, and the one most of these titles carry.
- Late Victorian
- Roughly the 1880s to 1901, and the period label most of these listings are filed under.
- Walnut
- The alternative timber to mahogany, appearing once in the sampled titles.
Frequently Asked Questions
What wood are these usually made of?
Mahogany, in five of the six sampled titles. It is the default timber for the group and generally paired with a c1890 date.
Walnut turns up exactly once, on a late Victorian dressing table chest. That one sits above three of the mahogany pieces in the range.
How old are Art Nouveau dressing tables?
The dealers' dates run from 1890 to 1910 and no further in either direction. Titles lean harder on c1890 than the dated field does.
Only two of the seven listings carry a clean year. The other five are filed as "Victorian", which is a reign label rather than a date, and covers roughly the 1880s to 1901.
What's the difference between a dressing table and a dressing table chest?
A dressing table chest is the chest-of-drawers form, with the mirror mounted above the top. The table form has a kneehole between pedestals instead.
Two of the six sampled titles use the chest description, and both fall in the lower half of the range.
Are any of these French?
One is. A French mahogany dressing table dated 1910 turns up in the group, and it sits at the top of the sampled range.
Everything else reads as English, and as late Victorian cabinet work.
Who made Art Nouveau dressing tables?
No maker, cabinetmaker or retailer is named anywhere in this evidence. The titles carry the timber, the date and the form, and little else.
They were made as ordinary bedroom furniture, commonly as part of a suite, which is why so many arrive without a name attached.
How often do these come up for sale?
About two a year on Sellingantiques, spread across five different dealers. Nobody carries them as a line.
The category is small and plain-titled, which is worth knowing if you are waiting for a particular timber or form.