The Antique Bedside Cabinet, Style And Storage

If you love bedside antiques , but either don’t have the money to collect just for fun, or like me, don’t have room to put too many to good use in an apartment, then you need to start thinking about multi-functional antiques. Our generation, after all, wasn’t the first that had to deal with small rooms and less than adequate storage. The average apartment, after all, does have a closet and that was a thing almost unheard of a hundred years ago. What those clever decorators of yesteryear had was ingenuity. They produced lots of the forerunners of furnishings we now rely on to create style and storage space in smaller homes. One of their finest contributions, and a must for any antique-lover living in a small flat, is the antique bedside cabinet .

They resemble those you see in furniture stores today, but with some major differences. The ones made a hundred or more years ago were definitely all wood, though some had veneered surfaces. These weren’t your eco-friendly woods found newer cabinets. These were the traditional maples, oaks and hickory when crafted in the colonies. In the old world they built them out of cherry, rosewood, ebony and other exotic lumber. Their craftsmanship was not subject to mass-production quotas and deadlines. Actual hands wielding actual tools inset the hinges and planed the rough edges so that, in 2010, you could buy an antique bedside cabinet that was still in great shape.

The cabinets outside would be enough of a lure, but add in the cabinet space beneath the tabletop surface, and you have a small apartment dweller’s answer to the nightstand that holds nothing beneath its shallow surface. The moral of this story is, if you love old furniture and live in a small house, you cannot afford not to invest in an antique that gives you nightstand and storage in one attractive, well-built package.