![Luikse Commode, KBS-FRB 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Luikse_Commode%2C_KBS-FRB_01.jpg)
A chest of drawers, also called (especially in
North American English
North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures, plus the similarities between the pronunciations (accents), v ...
) a dresser or a bureau, is a type of
cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filing ...
(a piece of
furniture
Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...
) that has multiple parallel, horizontal
drawer
A drawer is a box-shaped container inside a piece of furniture that can be pulled out horizontally to access its contents. Drawers are built into numerous types of furniture, including cabinets, chests of drawers (bureaus), desks, and the ...
s generally stacked one above another.
In
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
a dresser is a piece of furniture, usually waist high, that has drawers and normally room for a mirror. In
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
a dresser or a
Welsh dresser
A Welsh dresser (British English) or a china hutch (American English), sometimes known as a kitchen dresser or pewter cupboard, is a piece of wooden furniture consisting of drawers and cupboards in the lower part, with shelves and perhaps a sidebo ...
has shelves in the upper section for storing or displaying
tableware
Tableware is any dish or dishware used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. It includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, and other items for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of o ...
.
Chest
The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the crea ...
s of drawers have traditionally been made and used for storing
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
, especially
underwear
Undergarments, underclothing, or underwear are items of clothing worn beneath outer clothes, usually in direct contact with the skin, although they may comprise more than a single layer. They serve to keep outer garments from being soiled o ...
, socks, and other items not normally hung in or otherwise stored in a
closet
A closet (especially in North American usage) is an enclosed space, with a door, used for storage, particularly that of clothes. ''Fitted closets'' are built into the walls of the house so that they take up no apparent space in the room. Closet ...
. They are usually placed in a
bedroom for this purpose, but can actually be used to store anything that will fit inside and can be placed anywhere in a house or another place. Various personal sundry items are also often stored in a chest of drawers. It has a long history as one of the stand-bys of a
carpenter
Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, Shipbuilding, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. ...
's workshop. A typical chest is approximately rectangular in overall shape and often has short legs at the bottom corners for placement on the floor.
Chests of drawers often come in 5-, 6-, and 7-drawer varieties, with either a single or a double top drawer. The chest illustrated at right would be described as a '5 over 2 chest-on-chest', the latter term deriving from the fact that at one time it would have been made as 2 separable pieces. They are commonly made of
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...
, similar to many other kinds of furniture, but of course can be made of other materials. The inside of the drawers can be accessed by pulling them out at the front side. It is often placed so that the back side faces a wall since access to the back is not necessary. The lateral sides are also usually made such that they can be placed against a wall or in a corner. Although they can be plain in appearance, chests of drawers can also be made with a fancy or ornamental appearance, including finishes and various external color tones. Traditionally, drawers would slide out on smooth wood rails. Most modern cabinets (such as
Filing cabinet
A filing cabinet (or sometimes file cabinet in American English) is a piece of office furniture for storing paper documents in file folders. In the most simple context, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most comm ...
s) use
roll-out shelf
A roll-out shelf, also known as a glide-out shelf, pull-out shelf or slide-out shelf is a shelf that can be moved forward on slides in order to more easily reach the contents stored in the back of a cupboard or cabinet. The slide mechanism can al ...
sliders, made of metal, with rollers.
Most chests of drawers fall into one of two types: those which are about waist-high or bench-high and those (usually with more drawers) which are about shoulder-high. Both types typically have a flat surface on top. Waist-high chests often have a
mirror
A mirror or looking glass is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the ...
placed vertically on top, which is often bought with the piece. While a user is getting dressed or otherwise preparing their grooming, he or she can look at themselves in the mirror to check their appearance.
A ''
chifforobe
A chifforobe (), also chiffarobe or chifferobe, is a closet-like piece of furniture that combines a long space for hanging clothes (that is, a wardrobe or armoire) with a chest of drawers. Typically the wardrobe section runs down one side of the ...
'' (from ''chiffo''nier + ward''robe'') is a combination of a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.
History
First invented in China by Physician
Hua Tuo
Hua Tuo ( 140–208), courtesy name Yuanhua, was a Chinese physician who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty. The historical texts '' Records of the Three Kingdoms'' and '' Book of the Later Han'' record Hua Tuo as the first person in Ch ...
“華佗“, 180–208 CE. The chest of drawers were often used for storing different types of medicine and called "Hundred Drawers"
In late
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
the chest came into widespread use, especially in homes of the nobility. This type, also known as a coffer was more or less a simple joined wooden box with a hinged lid. It may or may not have stood on feet. An early transitional phase was the installation of one drawer beneath this main compartment. A number of early pieces from the seventeenth century are extant of
oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...
manufacture from
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, and corresponding seventeenth century pieces of
French walnut
A walnut is the edible seed of a drupe of any tree of the genus ''Juglans'' (family Juglandaceae), particularly the Persian or English walnut, '' Juglans regia''.
Although culinarily considered a "nut" and used as such, it is not a true ...
have survived. Some of the early surviving English specimens are from the
Charles I Charles I may refer to:
Kings and emperors
* Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings
* Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily
* Charles I of ...
period. Nutting ascribes the earliest piece in his Furniture Treasury to "before 1649".
Styles
Mule Chest: A chest commonly wider than it is high and deep. A mule chest has drawers in its base and a hinged top, beneath which there are either two short drawers or one long one. This form, introduced in England in the 1600, was popular for 100 years in England and colonial America.
Gallery
Image:Clevelandart 1989.158.jpg, Chest of Drawers, Circa 1720, Kingwood with gilt-metal mounts and marble, Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...
File:George III Chest on Chest.jpg, Chippendale-Style George III Mahogany Chest on Chest, Circa 1770
Image:ChestOfDrawers.jpg, A chest on chest, a derivative of the simpler chest of drawers
See also
*
Chifforobe
A chifforobe (), also chiffarobe or chifferobe, is a closet-like piece of furniture that combines a long space for hanging clothes (that is, a wardrobe or armoire) with a chest of drawers. Typically the wardrobe section runs down one side of the ...
*
Commode
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest ...
*
Chiffonier
The term chiffonier, also chiffonnier, may refer to one of at least two types of furniture. Its name comes directly from a French piece of furniture, the ''chiffonier''. The French name, which comes from the French for a rag-picker, suggests that ...
*
Tallboy (furniture)
A tallboy is a piece of furniture incorporating a chest of drawers and a wardrobe on top. A highboy consists of double chest of drawers (a chest-on-chest), with the lower section usually wider than the upper. A lowboy is a table-height set of d ...
*
Lowboy
A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table, vanity, or duchess ( Australian English).Lowboy is a "collectors term for a dressing table made in 18th century America often with a matching highboy ". It is a small tab ...
*
Nightstand
A nightstand, alternatively night table, bedside table, daystand or bedside cabinet, is a small table or cabinet designed to stand beside a bed or elsewhere in a bedroom. Modern nightstands are usually small bedside tables, often with one or ...
*
Tansu
are traditional Japanese mobile storage cabinets. are commonly used for the storage of clothing, particularly kimono.
were first recorded in the Genroku era (1688–1704) of the Edo period (1603–1867). The two characters, and , appear to h ...
*
Welsh dresser
A Welsh dresser (British English) or a china hutch (American English), sometimes known as a kitchen dresser or pewter cupboard, is a piece of wooden furniture consisting of drawers and cupboards in the lower part, with shelves and perhaps a sidebo ...
*
Keyhole
A lock is a mechanical or electronic fastening device that is released by a physical object (such as a key, keycard, fingerprint, RFID card, security token or coin), by supplying secret information (such as a number or letter permutation or passw ...
References
{{Reflist
Furniture
Cabinets (furniture)
Clothing containers
ca:Calaixera
de:Kommode
es:Cómoda
eo:Komodo (meblo)
fr:Commode (meuble)
io:Komodo
ja:箪笥
pl:Komoda
ru:Комод
fi:Lipasto