Wardrobes

Wardrobes can be beautiful, quality pieces of storage furniture that add style and impact to your bedroom. Traditional antique wardrobes can be found in various sizes, from large triple and double wardrobes, to narrow single cupboards. Whether you're looking for hanging space for a large fashion collection or an antique linen press, you can find it here! We love Victorian wardrobes and compactums. These come with more rounded corners and are often French polished. Very fine veneers including mahogany, rosewood and burr walnut were used to impress along with intricate marquetry and inlay such as cross banding, bookmarking and stringing with coromandel and boxwood. The wardrobe has a long history and first appeared in the English language in the early 14th century.  It originated from the Old French ‘warder’ to keep or guard, and ‘robe’ meaning garment. It was also the term given to a room in which the clothes of the nobility were stored. Over the centuries, sliding shelves and drawers were added until, in the nineteenth century, this piece of furniture became more as we know it today with its partitions, shelves, compartments and hanging space. The final development was when the central doors, which had previously enclosed merely the upper part, were carried to the floor, covering the drawers as well as the sliding shelves. They were often fitted with mirrors. Happily, these days you don’t have to be noble to own one of these elegant pieces of antique furniture.