Antique Sideboard

English Sideboards

In England, dining-room furniture only began to develop as functional purpose-made pieces from c.1730 onwards, with side tables made specifically for serving rather than merely displaying dishes. The first recognizable sideboards were contemporary with the work of the Adam brothers (the middle decades of the eighteenth century) and consisted of a heavy side table flanked by two pedestal cupboards topped with urns in the classical manner. These were ingenious all-purpose dining-room fittings, with knife urns, lead-lined
containers for keeping hot and cold water for washing glasses and cutlery, racks for hot plates, cellarettes for bottles and, frequently, pot-cupboards for the gentlemen’s after-dinner use.
From c.1770 the size of the sideboard became more manageable and the most common shape began to emerge: two deep drawers or cupboards (sometimes with drawers above), raised on legs, with a central frieze drawer above an arched or shaped apron. Many of them had a ’splash board’ at the back, or brass rails with pleated-silk panels, and brass candle-holders. It is Sheraton who is most often connected with the design of sideboards, although Hepplewhite, Shearer and George Smith all designed very similar pieces.
By about 1790 the most instantly recognizable and most copied shape for sileboards had become generally accepted. The interiors were fitted with many clever devices, including in some cases a heater beneath tinplate racks.
Signs of authenticity
1. Glossy, well-matched mahogany veneers on Honduras mahogany or imported Scandinavian red-pine carcases.
2. Grain of all legs continuing up to form sides of frame.
3. Grain of side carcase wood running horizontally.
4. Flush-edged top with good overhang, thicker than table top.
5. Back timbers unfinished and of same age and colour, showing gaps on joins where wood has shrunk.
6. Frieze drawer lined with baize and with original compartments.
7. No signs on inside bottom of carcase, which forms the flanking cupboards and drawers, of circular wear and scratchings where swing-out, fitted cellarettes have been removed.
8. Accumulation of dirt and patination around drawer
handles  good patination to insides of drawers.
9. Drawer bottom with timber running from side to side with central strengthening bearer.
10. Flush drawer fittings and handles with stamped brass decorated backplates.
11. Cockbeading edge to plainly veneered doors and drawers.
12. Undersurface edge of shaped apron veneered to match the edges of top serving surface.
13. Inner underframe of side sections either side of central arch visible and therefore plain veneered.
14. Signs of damage, scuffing to feet, particularly central ones.
Likely restoration and repair
15. Common in many variations is the massive sideboard cut down to more suitable sizes: many were over 6 ft long. Undersurface of overhang may
provide evidence. If fingers detect a ‘crack’ or break, check interiors of drawer fronts, central frieze drawer for newly made holes for handles without accumulation of dirt around them; examine underframe for evidence of cutting down.
16. On genuine smaller sizes, legs repaired where they have broken, or cut down where breaks have occurred on line with spade feet, and repair concealed by collar.
17. Added inlay and other decoration to original mahogany veneer. Harder to find material evidence, since ground veneer of this period often runs across whole surface, but style and proportions of later inlays are often quite wrong.
18. Aprons replaced with more elaborate design, or with later inlaid corner-pieces.