What is the difference between a sideboard and a credenza?

A sideboard is a dining-room serving piece, descended from a side table with flanking pedestals or drawers for cutlery, linen and bottles. Most carry Georgian or Regency labels and most are mahogany. A credenza is a low side cabinet for the drawing room, made for display. In this category it is usually Victorian and walnut, often with ormolu mounts and marquetry.

Which woods turn up most often?

Mahogany leads, named in around two-fifths of titles, and walnut follows at close to a third. Burr walnut alone accounts for about one title in six. Behind those come rosewood, usually with brass inlay, and satinwood on the revival-taste and Edwardian pieces. Amboyna, kingwood, pollard oak, burr yew and burr elm appear occasionally.

How accurate are the dates in these listings?

Only 304 of 756 listings carry a clean year. The rest rest on reign or century labels, with Victorian and a flat "19th Century" the two commonest. Read those labels as an era. A "Victorian" piece may date from the 1840s or the 1890s. Where clean years do appear they pile up on the 1860s, more than any other decade.

What does ormolu mounted mean on a credenza?

Ormolu is gilded metal ornament applied to the case: mounts at the corners, around the doors, along the frieze. It appears in thirty-two titles, concentrated on Victorian walnut credenzas. Mounts of this kind sit at the upper end of the range, alongside porcelain plaques and gilt bronze.

Are these mostly English pieces?

Yes. English sideboards, credenzas and side cabinets make up the bulk of the category by a wide margin. Continental work is the scarcest thing in it. Against hundreds of English pieces the samples yield only a handful of Dutch, Swedish and French examples, Swedish rarest of all.

How wide a choice comes up in a year?

Around eighty-six inlaid sideboards and related side cabinets are listed on Sellingantiques in a year. They come from a broad base of trade: 133 different dealers have handled them, which makes this one of the more widely stocked furniture forms.

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Antique Inlaid Sideboards

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Case furniture for the dining and drawing room, joined by decorative inlay rather than by one shape: serving sideboards, low display credenzas, chiffoniers and side cabinets in veneered mahogany and walnut.