Large Antique French Armoire, 1700s

Details

Description

Meet this lovely 18th-century french "buffet armoire à deux corps" — a very elegant way of saying two magnificent cupboards … Read more Meet this lovely 18th-century french "buffet armoire à deux corps" — a very elegant way of saying two magnificent cupboards stacked into one towering showpiece, the upper simply lifting off the lower so it can slip through your doorways without a single dramatic scene!

crowning the whole affair is a glorious domed bonnet — a "blown gable with centre console," (should you wish to say it at dinner parties) — with a keystone block at its peak and a little procession of carved blocks marching along the arch. Beneath it, tall arched panel doors that open to reveal\. Well, we'll get to that.

her provenance - we found her in france, and french she may well be — the alsace has long produced tall pine armoires cut from exactly this cloth. But the softwood body and the ghost of original blue paint hiding in the grain hint at a more well-travelled tale, one with a distinctly scandinavian baroque accent. Is she french? is she nordic?

she arrived to us in a tired coat of dirty dark brown. We spent hours hand-sanding her back to the bone — and what a reveal: honeyed pine, silvery weathering, and those seductive flashes of old blue where former lives peek through. Inside, we've painted her a deep brique red, so every swing of the doors delivers a gasp of colour. Her back tells the truth of her years, too: hand-pegged panelled boards and forged pin hinges, all made by hand, all still holding court after some 250 winters.

the backstory - cabinets like this were the crown jewel of a prosperous farmhouse or a bourgeois salon — the keeper of the good porcelains or linens, the trousseau, the family's finest textiles, and now and then a dowry gift for a marriage. Despite the "armoire" title, she never held a single coat: this was always a piece for display and treasured storage. Pine was the honest, everyday timber of the north, almost always dressed in paint — grained, marbled, or a bold solid blue. To strip her back to this, is simply to let the wood do the talking.

and her age? somewhere in the second half of the 18th century — call it 1770 to 1800, with a silhouette that stayed fashionably in vogue into the early 1800s.

the practical particulars:
full glory: h 276 × w 153 × d 70 cm (108.7 × 60.2 × 27.6")
upper corps: w 140 × d 42 cm (55.1 × 16.5")
splits neatly in two for a civilised delivery.

materials & techniques: painted pine wood
period: 18th century, ca 1780
style: provincial

please keep in mind that in many cases we sell vintage and antique pieces. None of these pieces should be considered new or in perfect condition.

all of our vintage products show the rich beauty and history of their life with the knocks and bumps of many years of use. We restore our pieces so they will be clean and in a good working condition. However we try to minimise restoration to keep every piece as original as possible.

the physical object can differ slightly in colour from the object as presented online. We have made every effort to display colours accurately, but cannot guarantee that the pictures accurately reflect the colour of those goods in real life. See less