Antique sideboards

Sideboards

The sideboard, as distinct from the side table or sideboard table, is generally attributed to Robert Adam, who showed his first designs some time after 1760. The original design contains within it, when the side pedestals are removed, the nucleus of the eighteenth century sideboard and its later developments.

The Adam brothers were dedicated to Roman and Greek classical forms. The pedestals at each side of the piece had vase-shaped urns which were for iced water for drinking and hot water for washing silver. The pedestals were used a plate warmer and cellaret (wine store) respectively. The central section, without the pedestals, is the form we generally associate with later Georgian sideboards, with or without the brass gallery at the back. Shearer and Hepplewhite illustrated pedestal types and so did Sheraton.

In later designs, like Gillows, the side cupboards of the central section became drawers and later still, in the Regency period, the side sections were extended downwards to form cupboards. The proportions of these later sideboards became heavier as a result.

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the sideboard became either a solid-doored cabinet of long proportions with or without carved decoration, or in emulation of the famous ‘Chevy Chase' exhibition piece of 1857-1863, highly carved in oak or mahogany with fruit, deer, rabbits, birds and other game.