The History Of The Chest Of Drawers

Chest Of Drawers

When we are relaxing in our homes we seldom think about the origins of the furniture and appliances that surround us, perhaps because they haven’t changed that much over the course of our lifetimes. The young people of today won’t remember that just a few decades ago the television set was often housed in a large wooden cabinet with doors, or that farther back in time beds used to have a special metal pan kept underneath them where you- well, that’s of no matter now, the thing is that things change, and sometimes even the most mundane objects have a colourful history!

Although you can find one in almost every modern bedroom, the history of the chest of drawers began just a few hundred years ago. Its predecessor, the ornately carved coffer chest, was a type of storage cabinet widely used from the 13th century onwards, but it wasn’t until the late 17th century that the chest of drawers came into fashion. This trend coincided with an increasing demand for luxury furniture and cabinet pieces from the wealthier citizens, and was bolstered by an increase in the number of cabinet-makers hoping to cash in on the new item’s popularity, banging out more of them as fast as they could sell them.

The use of opulently carved storage cabinets from that era began to filter down over time to middle-class homes. This was documented in Adam Bowett’s book English Furniture 1660-1714 which states that the fancy cabinet designs the wealthy employed were a direct influence on the chest of drawers found in ‘middling’ homes from the 1670s on, as the techniques of cabinet-makers changed.

The first examples of what we would call the chest of drawers were a piece of furniture specifically fashioned for those middle-class homes, their smaller size and somewhat less ornate design made them well suited for more modest spaces like the bedroom. Even so, they were still quite expensive to produce thanks to the use of imported woods and exotic veneers, as well as some remaining decorative details that included marquetry and cross-banding that gave each piece some individual style.

A person knowledgable on the subject and time can quite easily date a chest of drawers by simply examining the drawers and their handles. To give you an example, the chest of drawers of the early 18th century usually sported oak-lined drawers that had the grain running from back to front, whereas those of late 18th century make had the grain of the drawer liners running from side to side! The drawers of that period were made of woods other than oak, usually pine, mahogany, or ash.

Examining the style of the foot or base of a chest of drawers can also provide a fairly accurate indication of the period it was constructed in. The use of bun feet was common throughout the late 17th century, but they were subsequently replaced by bracket feet during the Georgian period, and those gave way to enclosed plinths by the time the Victorian age rolled around.

So, the next time you open your chest of drawers to find some socks, you can imagine what times were like before they were a common feature of the average bedroom.