A sideboard is a piece of furniture used to display China or to set food out while dining. The sideboards we’re familiar with first appeared in the 1700s, but became more popular in the 1800s when more people had dining rooms to eat in, and fewer people ate in their kitchens. Today, sideboards are often referred to as servers, buffets and credenzas.

Commonly made of oak or pine, a sideboard can be just a column for food to be placed on top of with some drawers for things like silverware, or it can be taller with shelves, sometimes glassed-in rather like a hutch. Home’s today will usually have a China cabinet or a hutch, but sideboards seem to have gone out of vogue in modern dining rooms. Some people still have vintage furniture that was used as sideboards back when more people ate from good dishes or China in a dining room, rather than using everyday dishes for most meals like is common today.

A sideboard can vary in price and value depending on the type of wood used, the style, the time period and the condition. Some Arts & Crafts period sideboards can cost well over $1000, and some Victorian period pieces can go well above that price, while some smaller and more modern sideboards can be had for only a few hundred dollars. Estate auctions are great places to find a sideboard. You can probably find one cheaper at an estate auction than you’ll ever find in an antique store.

Online auctions offer a huge variety of furniture, more than you will probably ever find in one estate auction or antique shop, but the size of the items can make shipping costs prohibitive. Still, if it’s worth it to you to pay fairly exorbitant shipping costs for such a large and usually heavy item, then you might enjoy browsing the dozens and sometimes hundreds of different sideboards available at places like eBay.

An oak sideboard from the early 19th century will most like be more valuable than anything produced in the 20th century, but it’s possible to find a situation where that isn’t true. Spending some time learning about the different furniture styles and manufacturers can only help you in your search for a valuable vintage sideboard.

If you can talk to an antique dealer or a seller and sound knowledgeable about revival styles like Arts & Crafts, Mission, Victorian, Gothic, Spanish and Renaissance style, you’ll be much less likely to end up paying far too much for a piece because the seller will guess that you know about what a piece might be worth. And knowing these furniture periods will help you estimate the value of a piece. Not only will you know if a seller is charging far too much for a sideboard, but you’ll also know when they’re charging far too less. Always ask about damage, whether it has replacement hardware, and whether the piece has been refinished, all things that can drop the value drastically

Originally posted 2008-12-08 05:00:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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