Antique French Sideboards between £0 and £0
A French sideboard is a low cupboard-and-drawer case piece, waist height, made to store linen, plate and food along a dining or kitchen wall.
What Are French Sideboards?
The heading covers buffets, enfilades, dresser bases, servers, side cabinets and credenzas. Dealers stack the names on one object, so a single piece can be titled a dresser base and a sideboard at once. Two terms open the category on Sellingantiques: one in five titles says buffet, one in eight says enfilade.
The provincial buffet in solid native hardwood is what you meet most. Oak leads, then walnut, then cherry, with chestnut behind. About a third of titles say no more than the wood, the door count and the word buffet or sideboard. Dresser bases and long three- or four-door enfilades follow the same country line.
Painted and bleached surfaces run right through that country group rather than sitting apart from it. Eighty-eight titles say painted, from original paint to scraped paint; another thirty-two say bleached, almost all of them bleached or limed oak.
Away from the kitchen sits the town furniture: marble-topped side cabinets and servers, and the inlaid, gilt-metal-mounted credenza of the 19th-century drawing room. Dating is loose across the whole archive. It runs 1750 to 1940, but 215 listings say only 19th century and 70 only 18th, with a separate 1920s Art Deco group in macassar, cerused oak and parquetry.
Where The Range Splits
Decoration does most of the sorting. Plain solid timber, a couple of doors, no more than the wood named in the title, sits at the bottom. Marquetry, inlay, ormolu mounts, kingwood and porcelain plaques cluster at the top, and the pietra dura and cut-brass pieces sit above those.
Size pushes in the same direction. Titles run from small painted kitchen buffets and two-door pieces upward through four-door sideboards to long enfilades, the longest named at nine feet in walnut and oak. Pairs, twenty-one of them, from provincial buffets to porcelain-mounted side cabinets, sit consistently above singles.
Timber and figure carry weight of their own. Burr appears in forty-three titles and isn't confined to walnut, with burr ash, burr elm and burr yew all surfacing. Amboyna, satinwood and macassar show up only in the higher part of the range, and a named or figured stone top, Carrara, pink, fossil, adds standing wherever it lands.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for french sideboards 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.
19th Century is the period label used most on Sellingantiques for French sideboards, with 18th Century next and the 1920s third.
The Antique French Sideboards between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Buffet
- The French low dining-room cupboard, and the commonest single word in these titles. Usually two or three doors, often with drawers above them.
- Enfilade
- A long buffet, three or four doors in a row, low and wide. Made to run along a wall.
- Dresser base
- The lower cupboard-and-drawer half of a dresser, sold on its own and used as a sideboard.
- Credenza
- Trade name for a low display side cabinet, inlaid and mounted, belonging to the drawing room rather than the kitchen.
- Potboard
- The open low shelf between the legs of a server or dresser base.
- Bleached or limed oak
- Oak lightened by stripping or liming, a finish that turns up throughout the country group.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a buffet and an enfilade?
Both are low French cupboards for the dining room. The enfilade is the long form, three or four doors in a row, standing low and wide.
Buffet is the broader and commoner word. It appears in 136 titles on Sellingantiques against 80 for enfilade, so a search on one term alone misses a good part of the category.
Which woods do French sideboards come in?
The timber list is long. Oak, walnut and cherry dominate, with chestnut behind them, and elm, ash, pear, apple, fruitwood and pine all appear in titles.
The town furniture brings in mahogany, rosewood, kingwood, amboyna, satinwood, purple heart, macassar and yew, mostly as veneer over a carcase.
Are painted French sideboards common?
Yes. Painted surfaces are a defining trait of the category rather than an occasional find, with 88 titles using the word, including painted buffets and painted enfilades.
Titles cite original paint and scraped paint alike. A further 32 say bleached, and 30 of those are bleached oak.
How old are most French sideboards?
The dated field runs from 1750 to 1940. Where decades are given they cluster in the 1850s to 1900s, with a distinct group from the 1920s.
Nearly half the archive is placed to a century rather than a decade. 215 listings say only 19th century, 70 only 18th century and 32 only Victorian.
What is a credenza in French furniture?
It's the trade name for a low display side cabinet, typically inlaid and gilt-metal mounted, with a marble top on many of them.
The credenza belongs to the 19th-century drawing room, not the kitchen. Seventy-four titles use the word, and the group holds the bulk of the upper range.
Do unusual pieces turn up in this category?
They do, once or twice each. A butcher's block, drapers' tables and banks of drapers' drawers, shop counters and a plate rack have all been listed under the heading.
Other one-offs include a metamorphic buffet, a faux bamboo cupboard and a child-sized credenza.