Cupboard
– originally simply a cup board, a shelf or a
stand for plates and cups. This was a common piece
of furniture in Tudor and Elizabethan times. Farmers
in the 16th century decorated their cupboards
with plates and the term cupboard was used for
an open structure of this type.
Early cupboards, which had a door, were known
as aumbries or almeries. Furniture inventories
listed cupboards with aumbries (this term came
to mean food stand). The almery was the ancestor
of many cupboards where the almoner of a great
house kept food for distribution to the poor.
Small hanging cupboards found in churches, which
also contained bread for the poor, were called
dole cupboards.
A term applied to late medieval cabinets or cupboards
on which food was placed ready to be tasted before
being served was a credence cupboard.
Food cupboards were also known as hutches and
some had various forms of ventilation.
The
earliest were made by carpenters and were of the
same plank construction as the early chests and
had doors pierced with Gothic tracery, with decorative
patterns with branching and crossing lines, as
in the upper part of many church windows.
In Canada, food safes or pre-safes often had metal
sheets with punctured holes in their doors. The
obvious purpose of the holes was to ventilate
the inside.
A court cupboard
in the middle of the 16th century was a structure
of several shelves (usually three) for the display
of plates, while the term buffet was more associated
with food. Both of these cupboards varied over
the years in design but essentially remained the
same for the purpose intended.
A press was a completely enclosed cupboard with
fitted door or doors and sometimes referred to
as a “close press.” Early very large presses were
also called armoires, after the French term.
One form of press
used in the hall or dining room had large doors
on the lower shelf, while the upper part was slightly
recessed.
The later larger press had a flush front, usually
broken up by paneling, with one central door or
two doors hung at the sides. This was for storage
of linen and eventually became what we now call
a wardrobe or armoire.
In America and to some extent in Canada, the press
was known as a Dutch – a solid type of cupboard
similar to the flush-fronted English press. Also
the German and Swiss settlers in Pennsylvania
had a massive cupboard called a shrank, which
was often painted with colorful designs of fruit
and flowers.
The last two cupboards which will be mentioned
are the small hanging cupboard with doors of course,
the corner cupboard. The corner cupboard came
in various designs, some flat-fronted and some
bow-fronted, usually with doors at the top and
bottom and often with drawers in the middle area.
Both of these cupboards were very popular in the
country areas of the US and Canada.
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