Armoire – An early french term for a cabinet, wardrobe or closet that is usually tall. The armoire originally was used for storing weaponry in medieval times rather than clothing. Usually double doors cover the interior which contains shelves, open space or hanging apparatuses.  

Wardrobe - A wardrobe is a cabinet intended primarily for the storage of clothing. British vocabulary sometimes gave it the name “oakley” because the closets were constructed predominently from oak. A hanging cupboard, the wardrobe evolved from a room-sized walk in with shelves and lockers to what we know today. A wardrobe can be a huge, cumbersome and highly ornate cabinet or a smaller more diminuitive storage unit. First constructed from oak, later walnut became the wood of choice for many wardrobes.

 In Europe many homes were never designed with a built-in closet. The first wardrobes were patterned after the armor bearing closets known as armoires. The wardrobe usually has double doors, carried to the floor and usually covering the drawers at the base. Inside there may be hanging rods as well as sliding shelves and may have mirrors.

Cheffonier or Chiffonier -  Some definitions describe a chiffonier as a tall set of drawers while others say it is a piece of furniture that is smaller than a sideboard with the whole of the front enclosed by doors and typically sits wide and low; a sort of buffet. There was often a shelf, raised and hosting a pierced brass gallery at its back. The doors were usually panelled and even edged with brass-beading. A chiffoniers feet were either pads or claws, or gilded sphinxes.

The French translation means “rag-gatherer” or “rag-picker”, suggesting that it was originally built to receive odds and ends that had no other storage place in the home. Cheffoniers date from the Empire style of furniture in England and were built of the favorite wood of that era, the rosewood.

Chifferobe or Chifforobe – A hybrid piece of furniture built to function as a closet in the twentieth century. Popular more in the southern United States than anywhere else, chifferobes were first seen advertised in the 1908 Sears and Roebucks Catalogue. The product description described the chifferobe as a modern invention. Many passages of popular southern literature (To Kill a Mockingbird, Wise Blood and The Ballad of Sad Café, to mention a few) use the furniture known as a chifferobe in their settings. The name chifforobe came from blending the words chiffonier and wardrobe.

Traditionally the chifferobe combines both a long space for hanging clothes like a wardrobe along with a set of drawers like a chest of drawers. Most designs host a side by side function, with closet down one and the drawers on the other.

The Amish carpenters of Northern Indiana build custom made closets for your home without ever tracking in a single footprint or leaving a shred of saw dust. With solid hardwoods and dovetailed drawers these wardrobes and armoires are available for living rooms, offices and bedrooms in oak, cherry, maple and hickory, along with a wide variety of stains. The interiors can even be personalized. For the nursery or child’s bedroom the Amish have designed an armoire changing table just their size.

So, whether you call it a closet, a cupboard, a cabinet, an armoire, wardrobe or chifferobe you will want to call them yours.

Tags: Amish Furniture Styles, Armoires, Cheffonier, Chifferobe, chiffonier, Chifforobe, closets, linen press, oakley, Storage, storage units, wardrobes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Baby Furniture, History of Furniture Making, Oak Furniture, Organization, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.