Among the pieces of furniture which Maarten Baas set on fire in 2002 as part of his Smoke series, besides a number of great furnishing classics, there is an old Venetian-style cabinet. The iconoclastic boldness of the young Dutch designer, eager to break with the older generations, didn’t randomly choose to strike this piece of furniture which has always been a constant presence in homes of all kinds, from the humblest to the noblest ones.
The essentials: 20 of the best sideboards
An emblem of functionality and a constant presence in all kinds of homes, but also a piece of furniture that is often considered outdated, the sideboard evolves while withstanding the test of time.
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- Giulia Zappa
- 11 May 2022
An emblem of the most essential functionality, used to store away any type of object, the sideboard is the piece of furniture that, more than any other, is the symbol of domestic order. Before the industrial revolution, artisans had always decorated its doors, often with symbols of local culture and craftsmanship. With the rise of decorators and designers, this characteristic became less and less relevant, linking itself to the personality of the individual interpreter and to a constant oscillation between solutions devoted to linearity or hyper-decorative maximalism.
After years of modular kitchens and storage systems, which seemed to have reduced the old sideboard to a thing of the past, in the last few years it’s made quite the comeback. The sideboard has regained verve, colour and decorative splendour. However, its nature as a volume designed to ensure order seems to have been put on the back burner. Rather, its new sophistication seems to be turning it into an object of attention, especially in bigger houses – yet another oscillation of the pendulum, destined to make it stand out without shadows or compromises.
Richly decorated with carved reliefs, this sideboard includes an étagère for displaying dining ware and decorative objects. The model, designed in the United States by the French cabinetmaker Alexander Roux, was presented at the 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York.
Art deco changed the look of sideboards, freeing the surfaces from any decoration and highlighting the different types of wood through noble veneers. The multifaceted geometric composition is also enhanced by the addition of contrasting materials, primarily chrome-plated metal for the handles.
Originally conceived for her Parisian flat at 130 boulevard du Montparnasse, Riflesso - part of the I Maestri di Cassina collection since 2004 and put back into production in 2014 - is a solid mahogany sideboard that makes the contrast between finishes its distinctive feature. The black lacquered structure enhances the enigmatic intensity of the piece, further accentuated by the contrast with the burgundy lacquered interior. The sliding doors and interior shelves are made of satin-finish aluminium, which by interacting with the surrounding environment creates a play of reflections. The production of sideboards and “enfilades” was very prolific for Perriand, both in the Le Corbusier years and in the years that followed. It allowed her to fine-tune the optimisation of domestic organisation, even for frugal spaces, without ever having to make compromises.
One of Fornasetti’s most famous pieces, the Architettura trumeau reclaims the perspective rigor that characterized Renaissance architecture and reinterprets it in a surrealist key. Transposed onto the smaller scale of a piece of furniture, decorations of palaces and squares can be appreciated in all their subtlety, while by opening the doors, the piece of furniture becomes a spatial device that emphasises the three-dimensional rendering of space. Architettura was presented at the Milan Triennale in 1951.
Although, as Gio Ponti points out, the “Cantù’s Cippendhale” is still a law upon itself in the field of Italian post-war furniture production, reconstruction fosters a strong linguistic renewal in the furniture sector. Ico and Luisa Parisi are among the most original interpreters of this. What distinguishes them is their taste for sculpted wood and the recurrence of the boomerang shape, which, starting from the legs, slims down the piece and sometimes embeds wall units and shelves.
An emblem of Mid-Century style, this Finn Juhl buffet adds a note of experimentation by playing with the closed and open configurations of the piece of furniture. Once you slide open the right-hand door, a series of drawers reveal themselves in their unexpected scale from blue to white, inspired by Goethe’s colour wheel. The frame, made of burnished steel, is accompanied by slender legs that are characterised by a pleasant wooden covering.
Manufactured by the English brand G Plan, Brasilia responds to a Mid-Century aesthetic, here revisited through the rounded curves of the supporting structure and handles. The piece, made of teak, follows a systemic logic that integrates other storage units in the same line.
The 4 D series consists of three compact sideboards, characterised by different door designs, conceived to be placed side by side to create a design that is more than a single piece. The structure is made of walnut wood with a marble top.
An iconic product, thanks in part to its moulded methacrylate doors that incorporate the handles and give it a space age charm, the 2000 series sideboard was produced in a wide range of configurations - with different numbers of doors, different heights, with sled legs. A further variation on the theme is the use of colour, with monochrome versions, in shaded colours or with marked contrasts. The same series also includes a line of bedside tables, chests of drawers and desks.
A piece of furniture with a dry, sculpted elegance that, also thanks to its lacquered finish, takes on a timeless aura. This three-door buffet with lock is characterised by the bevelled profile of the side blocks, making it particularly suitable for being positioned in a corridor. Originally designed for Simon Gavina’s Ultrarazionale collection, it is now available in the Cassina catalogue.
A monolithic presence that becomes fluid thanks to its semi-circular shape, Caccia Dominioni’s Mb7 thrives on small intriguing details, such as the chrome-plated metal structure that can be spotted at the base and between the doors, and the slightly protruding profile of the shelf, the only concession to the absoluteness of the shape.
After Saint Laurent’s Hommage to Mondrian, the world of design pays homage to the Dutch master by adapting the famous motif on a sideboard with an unusual square shape. The exaltation of abstraction developed by Kuramata is accompanied by careful research into functionality: each container space and, consequently, each door has a different shape to accommodate objects of different sizes.
Winner of the Compasso d’Oro in 1979, Sheraton stands out for its innovative sliding-rotating doors, which are positioned at the side of the cabinet. The combination of materials is also innovative: the structure is made of laminate, while the panels are made of precious wood or polyester gloss lacquer finishes.
A triumph of the expressive potential of laminate, Beverly transcends the veneer of many 20th-century sideboards through the juxtaposition of different textures. The shifting of the upper doors also contributes to destabilising the piece with irony, while a red lightbulb offers itself as a playfully unexpected presence.
A master of reclaimed design, Hein Eek has made the use of old wood his trademark. The signs of time are not concealed but enhanced through craftsmanship and a rigorous composition, attentive to the combination of colours and finishes, including, for some examples, his famous synthetic resin lacquer.
A piece of furniture that takes on the value of a totem. The legs, two knurled half-cones, are echoed in the gold-plated brass upper cone, while the square storage compartment is decorated on the front with a series of small symbols arranged strictly in a grid. Inside, the upper cone reappears in a small size, suspended on two squares, generating an effect that is halfway between mysticism and alchemy. In a limited edition of 3 pieces.
The recycled wood of Piet Hein Eek’s furniture is revived through the graphic reproduction of artist Richard Wood, who together with Sebastian Wrong reinterprets the Mid-Century style in a pop way.
The morphing proposed by Ferruccio Laviani, who with Evolution merges in a single piece an Empire-style chest of drawers and a rationalist-inspired sideboard, is quite daring. The syncretism, baroque in style and bold in spirit, highlights a manufacturing savoir-faire capable of combining different craftsmanship techniques in a single piece of furniture.
Vincent Van Duysen’s sideboard’s purity of forms is made possible by its glass doors, which make this piece of furniture not a place to hide objects, but on the contrary to highlight them, also thanks to the built-in lamp.
The Antigua series, consisting of three cupboards and sideboards of different sizes, is characterized by the design of the doors, which plays with the repetition of an abstract decorative motif in open chromatic contrast with the background. This detachment contributes to transforming the piece of furniture into an eye-catcher, while careful craftsmanship enhances the small details, such as the bevelled structure and the leather-covered handles.