Regency Household: Chiffonier and Pier Commode

Regency furniture

From Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decorwtion in the Most Approved and Elegant Taste, 1805, these designs feature the popular Egyptian themes that ruled many a fashionable home during the Regency.

A chiffonier in Britain is a low cupboard, sometimes with a raised bookshelf on top.  According to the Regency Redingote’s research, these were a recent item in Regency homes.  In part this was that as more homes had access to books, they needed a place to store them (https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/the-advent-of-the-english-chiffonier/).

Most references to the pier commode also come from the Regency era.  I found one description of it in a book about cabinets and furniture from 1835:

“The commode is a word of French origin and an article of furniture for convenience placed against piers in a withdrawing room ornamented sometimes with Chimæras at others either with consoles or turned pillar.s As a glass is fixed to this article the Graces would here be consistent or the household gods may be introduced for their character see Spence s Polymetis The glass frame is here adorned with a thyrsus in the centre of which is a Water nymph that element being first discovered to reflect and resorted to for viewing the face afterwards succeeded by polished steel and now by silvered glass “

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