Empire Sideboard Antique

With a vast inventory of beautiful furniture at 1stDibs, we’ve got just the empire sideboard antique you’re looking for. An empire sideboard antique — often made from wood, mahogany and metal — can elevate any home. There are many kinds of the empire sideboard antique you’re looking for, from those produced as long ago as the 18th Century to those made as recently as the 20th Century. When you’re browsing for the right empire sideboard antique, those designed in Empire and Victorian styles are of considerable interest. You’ll likely find more than one empire sideboard antique that is appealing in its simplicity, but Berkey Gay Furniture, H.F. Jansen and National Furniture Company produced versions that are worth a look.

The average selling price for an empire sideboard antique at 1stDibs is $5,160, while they’re typically $1,000 on the low end and $85,000 for the highest priced.

An antique or vintage sideboard today is a sophisticated and stylish component in sumptuous dining rooms of every shape, size and decor scheme, as well as a statement of its own, showcased in art galleries and museums.

Once simply boards made of wood that were used to support ceremonial dining, sideboards have taken on much greater importance as case pieces since their modest first appearance. In Italy, the sideboard was basically a credenza, a solid furnishing with cabinet doors. It was initially intended as an integral piece of any dining room where the wealthy gathered for meals in the southern European country.

Later, in England and France, sideboards retained their utilitarian purpose — a place to keep hot water for rinsing silverware and from which to serve cold drinking water — but would evolve into double-bodied structures that allowed for the display of serveware and utensils on open shelves. We would likely call these buffets, as they’re taller than a sideboard. (Trust us — there is an order to all of this!)

The sideboard is often deemed a buffet in the United States, from the French buffet à deux corps, which referred to a storage and display case. However, a buffet technically possesses a tiered or shelved superstructure for displaying attractive kitchenware and certainly makes more sense in the context of buffet dining — abundant meals served for crowds of people.

Every imaginable iteration of the sideboard has taken shape over the years. Furniture maker and artist Paul Evans, whose work has been the subject of various celebrated museum exhibitions, created ornamented, welded and patinated sideboards for Directional Furniture, collections such as the Cityscape series that speak to his place in revolutionary brutalist furniture design as much as they echo the origins of these sturdy, functional structures centuries ago.

If mid-century modern sideboards or vintage Danish sideboards are more to your liking than an 18th-century mahogany sideboard with decorative inlays in the Hepplewhite style, the particularly elegant pieces crafted by designers Hans Wegner, Edward Wormley or Florence Knoll are often sought by today’s collectors.

Whether you have a specific era or style in mind or you’re open to browsing a vast collection to find the right fit, 1stDibs has a variety of antique and vintage sideboards to choose from.