We had an inquiry from one of our better interior design customers a few days ago, asking after a shallow sideboard. That modern day dining rooms are narrow always begs requests for sideboards and dining tables that are shallow. We are able to shift 40” to 48” deep dining tables with alacrity- one of the finest tables we’ve ever handled is 54” in depth, and, despite the oohs and aahs from punters, it’s still here.
Purpose-built dining tables have always varied in dimension, but the fact is, the standard six-leg sideboard was meant to be a fairly deep piece of furniture, something in the neighborhood of at least 24” to as deep as 40”. Its original function was to serve as an in-dining room butler’s pantry, holding extra napery, with its cellaret drawers divided into bottle-sized divisions, lead-lined to hold water for keeping various types of firewater cool. A side note- sideboard examples from the north of England and Scotland, while containing drawers with bottle divisions, frequently do not have the lead liners- presumably it was so cold there that artificial methods for chilling wines were unnecessary.
The other item that is a frequent accoutrement of a sideboard is a cupboard for holding a chamber pot. Yes, you’ve read correctly. Why on earth? you ask. Well, after the ladies withdrew following supper, the gentlemen remained to drink themselves legless, and, naturally enough, needed something near at hand for relieving calls of nature. Depending on how grand the house, footmen were sometimes on hand to assist by holding the chamber pot in near proximity. Presumably another footman would hold on to the otherwise swaying gentleman, as well, to ensure a true and accurate arc.
All of this Georgian scatology, though, is by way of indicating that the original purpose of the sideboard tends to make it perforce a complicated and large piece of case furniture that cannot always be accommodated in a 21st century dining room. Sideboards couldn’t be accommodated in 20th century dining rooms, either. Consequently, for at least a century antiques dealers have blithely butchered these pieces, more than any other type of item than I can think of. Given how complicated the sideboard is in its original incarnation, one can understand, then, and appreciate to what extent a sideboard would have to be altered to decrease its original, purpose-determined depth.
In making a sideboard shallower, the back portion of the piece is sliced off lengthwise, eliminating any rear gallery, and requiring drawers be shortened, as well. Precise Georgian dovetails joining the drawer linings are eliminated, and typically replaced with- well, something less than precise. Bottle divisions and the linings are almost invariably stripped out, too- who needs them anyway, since champagne is kept in a refrigerator. Gone, too, would be the pot cupboard, sited as it typically was on the side and toward the rear of the original piece.
Unfortunately, this penchant for alteration has gone on so long that even heavily altered pieces can now look venerable. What would have seemed obvious when first done, with a number of years worth of subsequent use now looks old. Bottom line, though, is that a sideboard altered in the early 20th century is not any more valuable or desirable than a piece despoiled just yesterday.