Vintage View: Recycling some of that old and beautiful brown furniture

Kya deLongchamps encourages us to put a piece of neglected brown furniture — the linen press — back into useful and beautiful service

With sales across halls, houses, and industrial units signalling bargains with a gavel’s rap, the joy of the auction season is truly upon us. At this crisp time of year, many of the larger auction firms are getting their ‘attic’ or clearance sales out of the way, chasing out middling intake and honest, plain stragglers from past events.

There’s at least one handsome, commodious certainty for any large brown furniture sale, and in the sad demise in popularity of good, utilitarian pieces from the mid to late 1800s, it remains one of the most versatile buys for first timers — the linen press. In pine, walnut, mahogany, or oak, this storage piece has a great vertical thrust, making the best use of a mean footprint. He’s a quiet veteran that can stand on duty, back to the wall, just about anywhere that can accommodate the swing of his doors.