Painted Cupboard in Pine, Central Europe, 1900

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This antique painted cupboard in pine wood is a Central European rustic cabinet with a single door and crackled grey … Read more This antique painted cupboard in pine wood is a Central European rustic cabinet with a single door and crackled grey paint over a red ground. It originates from Central Europe, from the beginning of the twentieth century, when oil paint displaced distemper in domestic furniture.Cupboards of this format held the dry stores of the house and stood in the kitchen or the corridor. The small rectangular opening cut in the lower part of the door serves that function: it let air circulate and kept damp from condensing inside.The case is solid pine with a boarded back and corner braces. A framed panel door with a bevelled moulding closes onto a shelved interior, with iron hinges and a lever latch. The plinth carries a running moulding and the top overhangs slightly.The blue-grey coat has crackled into a dense, regular network that lets the tile red of the ground appear. Along the edges and on the plinth the grey has gone and the red dominates. The back keeps its red paint uncrackled.That crackle is the visual argument of the piece: it turns a flat surface into a texture, and gives the grey a depth it would not have freshly painted. There is no repaint concealing it.At 58 cm across the front and 85 high it works as an auxiliary kitchen cabinet, a tall bedside table or a narrow entrance-hall piece. The blue-grey makes it compatible with Nordic, rustic and contemporary interiors. See less