Antique Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco and 1920`s Dressers
Antique Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco and 1920`s Dressers
The term ‘dresser’ comes from the side table used for the `dressing’ of food in the medieval hall. The form which was used in kitchens of the 17th and 18th centuries was still unchanged in the early 19th. Indeed
kitchen furniture, as a general rule, has been the least subject to the vagaries of fashion. The dressers illustrated here show how the piece seems to have become acceptable as a piece of furniture which could be used either in the kitchen or the dining room of the cottage or modest house. Mainly the styles reflect the popular taste for oak furniture of Stuart or Jacobean type but modern versions, in art nouveau or Edwardian styles were also made. The simplest type of dresser, illustrated by Percy Wells in the 1920s, shows little change from its predecessor of a hundred years before; it is an enduringly useful form.
Due to the tremendous rise in popularity and price of antique dressers, the late Victorian version has now also become expensive as these examples show. Pine dressers of more modest price have also become very
fashionable and the fact that a pine dresser may be virtually brand new does not seem affect price very much provided it is an attractive version.
An oak sideboard of commercial manufacture which comes quite close to the spirit of the original period from which it derives. It seems that the designers of such pieces were always surer in their touch with the top halves. It is the cabriole front legs which disappoint; they are too curvaceous, too wavy to provide the ‘Queen Anne’ solidity and proportion that one seeks. The three deep drawers could have done with a fielded effect also, to relate them to the top. 1900-1920
An oak dresser in a style which derives from court cupboards of the early 17th century and later influences. The top half in its way is impressive, even if the downward-going turned knobs do conflict with the
upward-going turned pillars with their bulbous bases. The lower half is less sure, as the turned legs are thinner and the stretcher arrangement an eyesore. Inconsistency has triumphed by putting applied split balusters on the end stiles but a split bobbin turning at the centre. The asymmetric arrangement of a cupboard with two doors occupying one side and two drawers the other is purely 20th century. 1900-1920
An oak ‘Jacobean’ dresser with much twist turning to the legs, stretchers and tier shelf supports. The central and top aprons are shaped with stylistically consistent forms, but the two side cupboards, while doubtless
useful, are borrowed from the 18th century sideboard. Geometric applied mouldings to drawer and cupboard doors complete the Jacobean effect. A bold and decorative piece. 1910-1920
An oak dresser with twist-turned front legs and inlaid boxwood and ebony stringing lines to the panels on the very deep drawers. Borrowing a bit from the Jacobean in design and a bit from the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Another oak ‘Jacobean’ dresser sporting art nouveau handles to the drawers which are set beside a pair of cupboard doors in an asymmetric arrangement. Twist turned legs, stretchers and top supports and a rather
more expensively panelled back than the usual vertical planking.
Although in oak, this dresser exhibits the typical bas-relief machined carving in panels, also to be found on walnut and mahogany furniture of this period. The weakest point of the design is the use of the prissy cabriole front legs and scrolled bottom apron. If these are ignored, the base and top half are quite a bold, well-proportioned construction.
An open oak dresser by the same maker as the previous example, 349, but without the smashable glazed centre door disapproved of by Percy Wells (see 353). The use of ebony and boxwood diagonally-banded
stringing lines and inlays seems to have originated with Arts and Crafts Movement designers and remained popular in the 1910-1925 period. 1910-1925
An oak dresser on ‘Queen Anne’ cabriole front legs and plain construction but with a centre cupboard to the top shelf with a glazed door showing a stained glass tulip motif as decoration. Quite an Arts and Crafts
addition to a commercial mass-produced piece. 1900-1920
An oak dresser of plain construction sporting a set of art nouveau hinges to the doors, otherwise unremarkable.
A dresser from Percy Wells c.1920, intended to be made from whitewood and stained light brown. It is 3ft.6ins. wide and the top is “not to high to dust”. Wells was concerned with designs for new cottages in which there would be a kitchen-living room combined, in which such a dresser would stand. He was worried about the use of glass doors in the upper part, as recommended by the `Women’s Housing Sub-Committee’
(shades of 1984) because glass doors would add to cost. Since the china on the shelves would be used three times a day, there would be little time for it “to get dusty”. Glass doors would mean “more work to keep
them clean” and “expense if the glass got broken”. (Presumably this would happen when the husband of the wife emancipated from dusting and cleaning meretricious ornaments, hurled his beer mug at his spouse.)
Wells preferred solid doors instead of glass. The dresser was intended to be in the living room, thus preventing the purchase of a modern, cheap chiffonier or sideboard “anything but good or pleasant”. The rails of the doors are chamfered on the inside edges, but a plain rounded surface “is better than a chamfer” as far as “leaving no edge at all for dust to settle on”. Banter apart, the piece is useful, functional and proportionally well designed. A desirable unit which is virtually ageless unless the built-in kitchen takes over completely including the dining room. c. 1920
A small dresser of Percy Wells design, c.1920, apparently in oak but also conceived for whitewood, stained a light brown, waxed and set with a rubber polish. The shelf at the back was intended for china or books. The
terms ‘dresser’ and ,sideboard’ were somewhat interchangeable to Wells, who visualised the use of such a piece in either the kitchen or living room rooms which were combined into one large room in contemporary
designs for new cottages. He was quite right to say that it is difficult to see where a dresser ends and a sideboard begins, but took a tier of shelves as being the definitive feature of a dresser.
A dwarf dresser from Wells, c.1920, of simple and straightforward design. Almost down to a kitchen cupboard but still conceived from Wells’ dresser principle certainly low enough to dust. It is interesting to compare this unit with the one designed by Ambrose Heal see p. 34. c.1920
A walnut dresser base on cabriole legs connected by moulded stretchers. The three drawers are veneered in burr walnut and have a herringbone inlay between the burr veneer and the crossbanding. The piece is an
interesting interpretation of a ‘Queen Anne’ style, with rather high-quality cabrioles ending in a squared hoof-type foot and with shell motifs carved on the knees. There is a solid half-round moulding applied to the carcase edge around the drawers. The stretchers are an agreeable fantasy, quite unnecessary structurally and of a form derived from the cross-stretchers of the William and Mary period. Not knowing quite how to use the cross-stretcher idea between an uneven number of legs five the maker has compromised by putting in straight ones around the sides and back, and then has connected his traditional ogee curves to the back one by means of a semi-circular one in each case. 1920-1940
An oak dresser base from Maurice Adams, the stout column-turned baluster front legs of which are let down badly by the weak stretchers and back legs. There are two cupboard doors and two deep drawers with applied geometric mouldings in the Jacobean manner. 1920-1930