Antique Buffets between £0 and £0
A buffet is dining-room furniture for serving and storing at the side of the table, either an enclosed case of cupboards and drawers or an open stand of tiers.
What Is An Antique Buffet?
The word covers at least four different objects on Sellingantiques: the English pedestal or bowfront sideboard, the French two-door cupboard buffet, the open two- or three-tier serving stand, and the oak dresser base. Dealers often stack the names in one title, so "Sideboard / Buffet" or "Dresser Base Sideboard" is normal reading here.
The buffet started as a side table or tiered stand for serving and displaying food and plate. By the 18th and 19th centuries the name had spread to enclosed cupboard-and-drawer cases for linen, cutlery and bottles, and the English sideboard grew up as the fitted dining-room version of the same idea.
What you're most likely to meet is a 19th-century mahogany case piece titled as a sideboard. Sideboard appears in 548 of 1,076 titles and mahogany in 377, with oak second and walnut third. Bowfront, serpentine, breakfront and pedestal fronts all recur across the English side.
French pieces are the next group, around a sixth of the archive and a larger share of what has sold, commonly painted or marble-topped, including long low enfilades. Chiffoniers, credenzas and side cabinets form another cluster, burr walnut and mirror-backed. Dating is loose: 217 listings say only 19th Century and 125 Victorian, so read those as ranges.
Where The Range Splits
Timber and figure do most of the sorting. Burr walnut, figured and flame mahogany, pollard oak, satinwood, amboyna, kingwood and macassar sit in the upper half of the range, while plain pine sits at the bottom. The tail of timbers is long, with cherry, fruitwood, elm and padouk turning up once or twice each.
Decorative work pushes a piece up. Inlaid appears in 73 titles and carved in 95, and marquetry, parquetry, boulle and ormolu mounts show up only among the highest-priced examples. Shaped and architectural fronts, serpentine, bow, breakfront, demi-lune and stage-back, rank above flat ones.
Scale is priced at both ends, with 59 titles calling a piece large and 51 small, but the top of the range is held by monumental and exhibition-quality carved mirror-back pieces rather than by the earliest ones. A named retailer or designer also lifts a piece, though the names come singly from individual dealers rather than recurring across the category.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for buffets 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.
About 106 buffets are listed on Sellingantiques each year, and 203 separate dealers have listed one.
The Antique Buffets between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Dresser base
- The lower cupboard-and-drawer half of a dresser, sold and used as a sideboard; 82 titles carry the term.
- Bowfront
- A front curved forward, common on Georgian and Regency sideboards, and named in 33 titles.
- Serpentine
- A front shaped in a double curve, convex at the centre; 38 titles.
- Breakfront
- Centre section standing forward of the flanking ends, in 30 titles.
- Pedestal sideboard
- Two cupboard pedestals with a central drawer or recess between them.
- Enfilade
- The French long low sideboard, usually three or four doors in a row.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a buffet the same as a sideboard?
On this category the two words are effectively interchangeable. Sideboard appears in 548 of the 1,076 titles filed as buffets, and many titles run both words together.
The difference that does matter is between an enclosed case with cupboards and drawers and an open stand of two or three tiers. Both are called buffets, and the title alone won't tell you which.
What wood are most of them?
Mahogany leads at 377 titles, oak follows at 218 and walnut at 124. Between them they account for two thirds of everything filed here.
After that the list gets thin fast: cherry, chestnut, fruitwood, pear, apple, burr elm, burr ash, birch, elm, padouk, satinwood, amboyna, kingwood, macassar and palisander each appear only once or twice.
How old are these pieces?
The dated field runs from 1700 to 1940, and 418 listings carry a clean year. The earliest sampled piece is an oak dresser base entered as 1700; the latest are three French Art Deco sideboards entered as 1940.
Most dating is looser than that. Blocks of listings land on round decades, and 217 say only 19th Century with a further 125 Victorian, so those are ranges rather than dates.
The 20th century is present but thin, mainly the 1920s with a scatter later.
Are French buffets common on Sellingantiques?
French is in 168 titles, about a sixth of the category, and French pieces make up a larger share of what has already sold than of what is listed now.
They come as two-door cupboard buffets, long enfilades and buffets de corps, often painted or with marble tops. Origins beyond England and France are genuinely uncommon, with single Danish, Swedish, Italian, Flemish, Belgian, Hungarian, Anglo-Indian and Chinese pieces against those 168.
Which types sit at the top of the range?
Credenzas cluster at the upper end, frequently burr walnut and mirrored. Monumental and exhibition-quality carved mirror-back pieces hold the very top.
Age alone doesn't do it. Figured and burr timbers, marquetry, parquetry, boulle and ormolu mounts, and shaped or architectural fronts are what separate the upper part of the range from plain flat-fronted pine.
How often do buffets come up for sale?
Around 106 come to market a year on Sellingantiques, and 203 separate dealers have listed one.
That spread makes it a category almost every general furniture dealer touches rather than a specialism. Pairs are unusual, though a handful of listings have offered two matching French buffets, two Swedish enfilades or a pair of 18th-century burr ash buffets.