Dresser

This article covers the piece of furniture. The building called the "commode" in Berlin is the old library , the building in Bremen called the "upside down dresser" is the water tower on the Werder .

Dresser crossbow style from the time
of Louis XV. , adorned with carved ornaments , metal handles and keyhole plates

A dresser is a usually shows up, with drawers equipped box furniture which is predominantly situated on the wall. Its origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages .

etymology

The German word was borrowed from French around the middle of the 18th century, where it originated around 1700/1705 as a noun for the adjective “commode” (for “comfortable”). Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariä (1726–1777) mentions the piece of furniture and its typical content in the first version of his joking poem Der Phaeton , published in 1754 : “[…] and hollow out of my commode, where cornets and shirts and aprons lie by dozens, a canvas Apron[…]".

Origin of the furniture type

A French version of the chest of drawers and chest from the 17th century, mainly used in England and North America. (Musée des Hospices civils de Lyon)

The earliest known pieces of furniture, which are similar to the type of furniture later known as the "chest of drawers", were special sacristy cabinets that were used to store the paraments . Some Gothic cupboards with double-row cupboard doors were only provided with wide drawers in the lower area in sacristies. The individual drawers made it possible to separate the regalia according to office and occasion. Such a tall sacristy cabinet from Feldkirchen (Carinthia), decorated with flat cuts and tracery carvings and dated 1521 , is now in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna .
For the same purpose, pure drawer furniture was also manufactured in the late Middle Ages , mostly consisting of several rows of drawers built together, the leaf of which served as a large storage area. The spacious furniture was sometimes given a place in the middle of the room. A wall painting in the church of St. Primus and Felizian near Črna pri Kamniku ( Slovenia ) contains such a piece of furniture: The frescoes from 1504 show scenes from the life of Mary on the south wall, including a representation of women weaving and sewing with the Virgin Mary at the loom in front of a low cabinet with only drawers under the sheet.

Forerunner of a chest of drawers from Spain: right side on the cloister

Such table-high furniture for sacred textiles was particularly widespread in Spain. A representative example of a cajonera de la sacristía from the 16th century can be found in the pre-sacristy of Avila Cathedral . The massive drawer cabinet is filled with panels all around, surrounded by matching chairs, the folds of which clearly show Gothic features. The wooden furniture is assigned to the woodcarver of Flemish origin, Cornelius de Hollanda (active in the 16th century in Spain). A little more recent but better known are the long rows of cajoneras on the wall of the sacristy of El Escorial , whose style follows the Renaissance .

Another type of furniture that most likely also contributed to the emergence of dresser-like drawer cabinets is the archive or cabinet cabinet. An example is an archive cabinet from Breslau (Silesia), which is equipped with numerous small drawers inside and is located in the Archdiocesan Museum. This archive cabinet is verifiably the conversion of a shelf that was divided, filled with small drawers and labeled MCCCCLV (1455). The purpose of the cabinet and archive cabinets was similar to that of the chests: with their initially small size, the location with the valuable contents could be changed quickly if necessary. To secure the many drawers, these cabinets were initially given doors or a flap which, when opened, acted as a support or writing surface. In order to emphasize the value of the contents of cabinet cabinets, they were richly decorated and placed on racks or tables. Sometimes they were also given saucers, which were also equipped with cupboards and drawers, but more coarsely divided than the cabinet. An example of this is the Spanish taquillón , which sometimes stood under the vargueño instead of a frame , a cabinet with a writing flap built mainly in Castile , probably of Moorish origin. The taquillón was divided into two halves vertically and horizontally and is reminiscent of a chest of drawers. Of the four uniform compartments, however, at most the upper two were designed as drawers. The base of the cabinet was also used as a stand-alone unit and was ultimately built as a stand-alone cabinet until some models were only equipped with drawers from the 17th century onwards. Such furniture spread to England via the Netherlands. They are characterized by narrow, high drawers that take up no more than half the total width, whereby not only the division but also the design language of the early chests of drawers points to the Spanish model.
In German areas, too, carpenters created elaborate cabinets with numerous drawers; Above all, Augsburg is considered an outstanding place of origin, where, for example, the Pomeranian art cabinet that was destroyed in World War II was created in the early 17th century.

In addition to the development of dresser-like furniture from the shelf, the plinth drawers of the chest also led to similar furniture. When larger and larger chests were preferred in the 15th century, they were initially given small compartments, insert boxes and narrow shelves inside. With the spread of the drawer, the chests increasingly became with plinth drawers, i. H. Completed below with outer drawers. They were widespread across Europe during the Renaissance . In England in particular , they were raised further with additional rows of drawers. This combination of dresser and chest is called mule chest in English , while there is no special name for it in other language areas. From the middle of the 17th century in England and North America, in addition to the early, still Spanish-looking chest of drawers , pure drawer versions were also created from the mule chest , in which the upper chest was left out. Easily designed, transportable models that could also be stacked were often used on ships.

The displacement of the chest by a piece of furniture with drawers can also be seen in the development of Japanese tansu . Here the transportable chest was given a drawer ( hikidashi ) that could be opened from the outside and was originally intended for the firewood, while the chest was reserved for food. Later, the Japanese travel furniture was expanded with further drawers at the bottom until it finally lost its suitability for travel and some types had so many drawers on top of each other that the upper chest was dispensed with.

The first cabinet furniture entirely corresponding to the chest of drawers appeared in northern Italy in the 16th century under the name cassettone . In Liguria and Tuscany this piece of furniture was often decorated with figures, as happened with the stipo a bambocci , a cabinet similar to the Spanish vargueño . Its division with continuous drawers across the entire width, however, corresponds more to the sacristy cupboard for the vestments. The cassettoni were built in different designs: in addition to console cabinets and bedside desks with drawers, there were also secretaries ( canterani ), which looked like chests of drawers, but at the top instead of a drawer had a flap with small containers behind and a pull-out writing surface, and thus the English butler's desk des Anticipated the 18th century.

Although drawer furniture was no longer uncommon in Western Europe in the 17th century, the triumph of the chest of drawers did not begin until around 1700 in France, after which it quickly became the most popular cabinet furniture, which indicates the enormous influence of France in matters of fashion.

The heyday of the chest of drawers in the 18th century

French commode en tombeau , first half of the 18th century. (Musée des Hospices civils de Lyon)

Chest of drawers with false bronze cross members, attributed to Mathäus Funk's workshop in Bern, around 1760. (Museum for Bernese living culture from the 17th to the 19th century, Jegenstorf Castle)

Chinoiserie style chest of drawers with Asian lacquer inlays and a yoke-shaped curved front from the workshop of Bernard Van Riesen Burgh the Elder . J. (1700–1760), Paris, around 1730/1733. (Munich Residence)

Writing furniture by the German furniture maker Abraham Roentgen (1711–1793), consisting of a chest of drawers, a desk and a cupboard attachment, around 1750.

One of the early manufacturers of French chests of drawers was André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732), whose model, delivered to the Grand Trianon in 1708 (referred to as “bureau” by the workshop ) illustrates the baroque tendency to hide functionality behind complex forms. At first glance, Boulle's multiple drawer furniture is reminiscent of a hanging chest, possibly inspired by the hanging boxes of carriages of that time.

In general, the French made a distinction between two main types, the heavier grandes commodes , which stood against the wall, and the petites commodes , the small table furniture with several drawers below one another, which were also placed in the middle of the room. Apart from Boulle's design, the overall shape of the grandes commodes was still more or less box-shaped in the early 18th century . Variations mainly concerned the corners, which were either prismatic or curved outwards as a continuation of the feet in the lower area, sometimes also - in Boulle-style - protruding like a clasp. The jewelery focused on the fittings and especially on the marquetry , which around 1700 included not only precious woods but also other materials, mainly bronze, in the sumptuous furniture.

The shape of the chest of drawers began to become significantly more complex during the Régence . A stylistic variant was the commode en tombeau , which in its most distinctive form, with the upward protruding sides, is reminiscent of the cassoni, of Italian Renaissance chests.
The concealment of functionality, characteristic of the late Baroque , was increasingly supplemented by the pretense of false functions: key plates without keyholes, or drawers pre-blinded with doors, or doors designed like drawers were part of the sophistication. The horizontal crossbars that visually separate the drawers have either been eliminated, hidden behind drawer panels or simulated by applications where they were not available. The procedure with traverses became the individual style of individual furniture makers, such as the Bernese Mathäus Funk (1697–1783), who emphasized it with metal rails, resp. pretended.

A special feature of the Rococo was the crowning of the chests of drawers: a gently arching repetition of the corner shape in the middle of the front, sometimes also on the sides. It was one of the many rhythmic elements of the Rococo formal language when attempts were made to translate the melodious into the visual, so that the description “bombée” only does justice to one aspect of the design.

Various standards have been established for the curvature of the front of the late baroque chest of drawers, including - often in addition to the crowning - the yoke-like curved front when viewed from above. This was often varied and resembled, for example, the shape of a crossbow, called "en arbalète" in French . The more bulges the surface had, the more the polish came into its own. A stylistic peculiarity that probably originated in Frankfurt is represented by the "wave chest", which was hardly decorated with fittings, but was designed with more pronounced wave shapes. The style, which peaked around 1740, was also widespread in Zurich.

When, in the second half of the 18th century, the classicism prevailing in England began to increasingly dominate the French style throughout Western Europe, the design of the chest of drawers was reduced to strictly geometric shapes. The again simplified front section was enriched at most with a central projection, a small angular protrusion in the middle. Such chests of drawers are called “commodes à ressaut” in France . Another design preferred by classicism was the overall semicircular shape when viewed from above, called "demi-lune" in French . For the complex design of the front sections, the drawers of classicist chests of drawers were covered more often than before with swinging or sliding doors. The commode à vantaux , the ' winged chest of drawers', was also widespread , in which either the chest of drawers was flanked by cupboards, or vice versa, whereby the doors often only served as a 'backdrop' for the drawers.

The petites commodes of the 18th century included the narrower chiffonnier (fr. Chiffonnier ), initially a small table with longer legs and a few drawers for storing light cloths (chiffons) under the leaf. Later in France, taller chiffoniers with more drawers were created, after the narrow version of the chest of drawers was already widespread in England .
Noteworthy is a trumeau , often called 'pillar chest of drawers' in German. This is supposed to come from the fact that the furniture was placed in the short wall sections between windows (the pillars ). Irrespective of whether the translation of French as 'pillar' makes sense, the space was reserved for low furniture, primarily for consoles, so as not to darken the room with tall box furniture. A special chest of drawers is the semainier , which consists of seven drawers and rises above the height of the table, appeared in France in the style epoch of transition and in other countries during the Empire . In Germany it is referred to as a 'weekly dresser', often associated with the declaration that the (under) laundry was kept in each of the seven drawers for one day of the week. High chests of drawers of this type were also built as blenders , i.e. cabinets with doors disguised as drawers.

Chests of drawers were often combined with other types of furniture in the 18th century. The attachments were shelves, showcases and cabinets, the latter often with a door in the middle, flanked by numerous drawers, often referred to as "tabernacle attachment" in the style of the later antique market. This is probably due to the elevated central position, while the cabinet was by no means used as a house altar, even if such a misappropriation occurred occasionally in Italian cabinets of the Renaissance, the stipi di bambocci .

Chests of drawers also served as writing furniture, for this purpose in the 18th century they were mainly equipped with a secretary attachment, which, with its sloping top flap, corresponds to the upper part of the desk, the French bureau en pente . Such writing chests of drawers were also very popular in German-speaking countries and were often provided with a second attachment, often with that cabinet-like cabinet attachment that has a cupboard in the middle. These three-part writing furniture are now sometimes called A-trois-corps , avoiding the gender of the French (and unknown in France) word creation.

Another type of writing desk, which hides a secretary instead of the top drawer, spread mainly in England in the 18th century; the type ( butler's desk ) is - as mentioned above - much older and comes from northern Italy. The English use the term “bachelor's chest” for the simplest type of writing desk, which was initially equipped with an additional sheet that could be folded out to the front. The open writing surface was held horizontally by push supports. When pull-out additional panels came into fashion on the furniture, the writing surface of the 'bachelor chest' was no longer foldable, but retractable.

Development since the 19th century

Former types of drawer furniture, such as the vargueño , the stipo di bambocci , as well as all variants of the cassettoni and the commodes , were copied many times in the historicist era . As the advancing industrialization made furniture cheaper and apartments received more and more furniture, carpets and display objects, the chest of drawers and especially the writing desk lost their primacy among the many types of box furniture. From this time until the 1950s, the washbasin was popular as a special form of chest of drawers: Before bathrooms became commonplace, they were used to set up the washbasin and a jug of water. Accordingly, the cover plate had to be insensitive to water splashes and was therefore often made of marble ; later, glass plates were also used to protect the wooden cover plate. From the 30s to 60s, the dressing table was also popular, a low dresser with a (mostly three-part) mirror attached above which you could sit in front of and do your hair or make-up.

However, pure drawer furniture for storage remained common in offices and business premises. The disadvantages of the drawer, such as the jerky opening and closing from a certain width and the poor visibility of the rear contents, were eliminated in the 20th century by metal telescopic rails. There was also the simplification of handling through more complex mechanics: the office drawer only had to be pushed lightly, whereupon it closed automatically and gently.

In the meantime, apartment users are again preferring lower box furniture, such as the sideboard, which also has drawers.

literature

• Cabinets and chests of drawers 1650–1800 in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , 2 volumes, from the series: General catalog of furniture from the Germanic National Museum ; Hatje Cantz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7757-4023-4 .

Web links

Commons : Dressers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: chest of drawers  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Définition de "commode". In: Center National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. Retrieved December 8, 2016 (French). 
2. ^ Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariä: Joking epic poetry along with some odes and songs . Ludolf Schröder's heirs, Braunschweig and Hildesheim 1754, p. 295 .
3. ^ Franz Windisch-Graetz: Furniture in Europe . tape 1 . Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1982, p. 289 .
4. ↑ place of pilgrimage with the church of St. Primus and Felizian (Sv. Primož in Felicijan) and the church of St. Pete; Slovenian Tourist Board. Accessed in 2016 . 
5. ↑ on [1] found picture, now only viewable after registration, Institute for Realienkunde, University of Salzburg.
6. ↑ Sacristía y Sala Capitular. Accessed in 2016 (Spanish).  , Ed. Catedral de Ávila.
7. ^ Franz Windisch-Graetz: op. Cit. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich, p. 278 f .
8. ^ Robert Rattray Tatlock et al .: Spanish Art - An Introductory Review of Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, Textiles, Ceramics, Woodwork, Metalwork . (Reprinted from 1927) Read Books Ltd, Redditch 2013, pp. 56 .
9. ^ Drop-front desk on chest (Vargueño). Retrieved in 2016 .  ; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
10. ↑ Jess Stein (Ed.): Random House Dictionary . Random House, New York 1966.
11. ↑ Ty Heineken et al. Kiyoko Heineken: Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry . Weatherhill, New York 1981, ISBN 978-0-8348-0548-4 , pp. 9 .
12. ↑ MA Zilocchi: Cassettone, manifattura Lombardo-Veneta. Retrieved in 2016 (Italian).  , Lombardia Beni Culturali, Padua, 2014.
13. ^ "Quelques chefs-d'œuvre". (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 ; accessed in 2016 (for the exhibition “18e, aux sources du design, chefs-d'œuvre du mobilier 1650 à 1790”, from Oct. 28, 2014 to Feb. 22, 2015). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ed. Château de Versailles, 2014.  
14. ↑ Wolfram Koeppe: Commode. Accessed in 2006 .  , Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
15. ↑ André Jacob Roubo: L'art du menuisier en meubles. Seconde section de la troisième partie de «L'Art du menuisier» . Saillant et Nyon, Paris 1772, p. 753 ff., Pl. 274, 275 .
16. ↑ Thomas Boller u. Werner Dubno: Zurich Furniture - The 18th Century . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2004, p. 28 ff .
17. ↑ Cabinet (commode à vantaux) c. 1778-88. Retrieved in 2016 (French).  , Collection Trust, London.
18. ↑ To Italian walnut bambocci cabinet… Accessed in 2016 (lot 49, auction L09638 on July 8, 2009 by Sotheby's in London, 2009).