Cabinet

cabinet, in furniture design, originally a small room for displaying precious objects and later a piece of furniture composed of a network of small drawers commonly enclosed by a pair of doors. Cabinets were first used in Italy during the late Renaissance. In many parts of Europe, cabinets became the most sumptuous pieces of furniture, with great displays of marquetry, carving, inlay, and gilding. Some cabinets were placed on stands, others on chests. Themselves objects of art, cabinets were popular for storing collections of china, coins, shells, and curiosities.

By the early 16th century, cabinets were in use in France and England. The French style was based on architectural lines, often executed in walnut and sometimes elaborately decorated with bas–reliefs, ivory, or mosaics. The earliest English examples, small and mounted on stands, were plentiful among the wealthy by the 17th century. After the Restoration (1660), cabinets were used as decorative objects, and their embellishments included walnut veneers, floral marquetry, needlework, and japanning (oriental–style lacquerwork). A symmetrical arrangement of drawers surrounded a small, central cupboard, in which it was common to find a temple-like structure, with columns backed by mirrors that increased the apparent perspective. Many Chinese and Japanese lacquer cabinets were imported into England during Charles II’s reign and were mounted on exuberantly carved stands that were gilded or silvered. In the 18th century and later, many cabinets were fitted with glass shelves to display china.

Inlaid cabinets were a specialty of Antwerp and southern Germany in the mid-17th century. One of the most famous was the “Wrangelschrank,” taken as booty in the Thirty Years’ War by the Swedish count Carl Gustav Wrangel. Made in Augsburg in 1566, it was decorated with boxwood carvings and outstanding pictorial marquetry.