Pair Of Late 19Thc Painted Pine Bedside Tables C.1900

The pair of blue grey painted bedside tables or cabinets, each having a square top with canted corners over a single frieze drawer over a cabinet door and flanked by a pair of canted pilasters raised on turned bun feet and surviving from the last quarter of nineteenth century.

The distressed paintwork is not of the period but isn’t recent either, probably twenty or so years in vintage and it is well executed. The ceramic knobs are also later though attractive and in proportion. They stand well and the drawers and doors all operate as they should.

Nightstands as they were once called started off as small cabinets with one or more doors on the front. They were used to store chamber pots before the era of indoor plumbing. They were often referred to as “commodes” and were typically made to follow French styles. In fact, by the mid-18th century, cabinet makers were using the term “commode” to refer to a chest with a gracefully curved front and shaped sides. Sometimes these were larger pieces of furniture that included shelves, while in other cases they were simple cabinets featuring an interior storage space covered by one or more doors. When indoor plumbing became more widespread, the need to store a chamber pot disappeared. Once the items that needed to be stored in these cabinets changed from clunky chamber pots to pieces of clothing and knick-knacks, drawers replaced the cabinet-style doors, and commodes effectively morphed into the nightstands that we are familiar with today.

Very pretty bedsides, and somewhat oddly rather hard to find in this finish.