Vintage view: The dining room sideboard

It’S fascinating to see a line reaching through centuries past, right into our living spaces. In some cases there’s a clue in the very name of the object and the sideboard is just such a piece.

Most of us have a variant of it, be it a low-slung media console, or a crouching buffet of sorts flanking the dining table or celebrated shyly out of place in the livingroom.

Now, cabinet designers have rediscovered the sideboard form in the re-awakened appreciation of mid-century modes and manners. Vintage examples, the best of which date from the 1950s and ’60s in exotic solid woods and veneers, which once lingered for €30-€50 at the back of every secondhand retail cave, now command hundreds and, in the case of great Scandinavian and British names, thousands.