Antique Credenzas
A low, long cupboard-fronted cabinet with a serving top, made for the dining room, hall or drawing room.
Antique Credenzas
The heading covers one family of furniture under several names. Sideboard appears in 598 titles, side cabinet in 132, chiffonier in 99, dresser base in 103 and buffet in 50, and plenty of titles use two or three at once. The form itself is consistent: low, long, doors at the front, a flat top for serving.
The core object is a Victorian walnut side cabinet. Walnut runs through 527 titles, burr walnut through 298, and 167 pair 'Victorian' with 'burr' directly. Inlay turns up in 262 titles, marquetry in 87, gilt-metal mounts in 69. Where dealers give a decade, the 1860s and 1850s lead.
Around that core sit four recurring branches. Georgian and Regency mahogany sideboards, often bow-fronted, serpentine or breakfront, and sometimes on pedestals. Oak and pine dresser bases, weighted towards current stock. Chiffoniers, frequently rosewood, several described as dwarf or narrow. French and Continental buffets and enfilades.
The dated field runs from 1700 to 1940, so the odd late seventeenth-century oak dresser, eighteenth-century Italian piece and 1920s Art Deco sideboard all surface. Anything outside roughly 1780 to 1900 is occasional rather than typical. English, French, Italian, Swedish, Chinese and Anglo-Indian examples all appear.
Where The Range Splits
Timber and figure do most of the sorting. Burr and figured walnut, sometimes with amboyna, dominate the upper band; plain oak, pine and mahogany described without qualification sit at the lower end. Burr walnut is the signature timber of the archive, and its presence in a title tells you a good deal about where a piece sits.
Then decoration. Marquetry, ormolu mounts and inset plaques of porcelain, Sevres, pietra dura or hardstone cluster at the top, the plaques appearing in only a handful of titles across the whole archive. Shaping counts too: serpentine, bow-ended and breakfront fronts sit above flat-fronted two-door pieces.
Scale and a name lift things further. Four-door, mirror-backed and stage-back examples rank above dwarf and small-proportioned cabinets, and a cabinetmaker's or retailer's name pushes upward. The highest-priced things sold on Sellingantiques under this heading are not credenzas at all but French ormolu- and porcelain-mounted commodes.
Antique Credenzas Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for credenzas, 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.
Burr walnut is the signature timber of the credenza archive on Sellingantiques, and many burr walnut titles carry the word Victorian too.
Gillow
The Antique Credenzas Glossary
- Credenza
- A low side cabinet with cupboard doors and a serving top, usually Victorian, often with shaped or glazed ends.
- Chiffonier
- A smaller side cabinet, frequently with a shelved or mirrored back. It runs through 99 titles, commonly in rosewood or mahogany.
- Dresser base
- The lower half of a dresser, used as a sideboard, in oak or pine. It appears in 103 titles and leans towards current stock.
- Breakfront
- A front where the centre section projects forward of the ends. Serpentine describes a front curved in and out in an S-shape; bow front, a single outward curve common on Georgian sideboards.
- Burr walnut
- Veneer cut from a burr growth on the tree, giving swirled, knotted figure. In 298 titles, and the timber the archive is built on.
- Enfilade
- A long, low French sideboard with several doors in a row, seen in oak and cherrywood. Buffet is the broader French and Continental term for a sideboard.
Antique Credenzas: Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between a credenza and a sideboard?
Very little, in how these are titled. Sideboard is the commonest word on Sellingantiques, in 598 titles, and credenza tends to be used for the shaped, cupboard-fronted Victorian side cabinet made for the drawing room as much as the dining room.
Many dealers use both words in one title, along with side cabinet or chiffonier. Reading the timber, shaping and date in the description tells you more than the noun does.
Which wood is most common?
Walnut, in 527 titles, with burr walnut in 298 of those. Mahogany follows at 343, then oak at 158, rosewood at 75 and pine at 35.
Rosewood shows up largely on chiffoniers, oak and pine on dresser bases, and mahogany on the Georgian and Regency sideboards.
How old are most of these?
The dated field spans 1700 to 1940, but more than half the dating is a period band rather than a year. Victorian appears as a label on 292 listings, 19th Century on 250.
Where a decade is given, the 1860s lead with 143 listings and the 1850s follow with 89, then the 1880s and 1870s. The 1800s account for the Georgian and Regency end.
Do credenzas usually have marble tops?
No. Marble appears in 67 titles out of the whole archive, and marble top in 54.
Mirror backs are scarcer still, in 34 titles. The plain wooden serving top is the norm.
Are these often found in pairs?
Occasionally. Paired walnut credenzas, rosewood cabinets and painted Swedish enfilades all turn up, which is unusual in a form generally made singly.
Single pieces are what you'll meet most of the time.
What unusual examples turn up in this category?
One-offs surface now and then: a Hungarian carved dresser base, an aluminium Art Deco aviator sideboard, a Scottish dairy dresser, an Irish cedar two-door cupboard, a child-sized ebonised credenza.
At the top end sit French ormolu- and porcelain-mounted commodes and an exhibition-scale carved mahogany mirror-back console. None of these represent the category, but the heading is wide enough to hold them.