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Gillow Chippendale

A Brief History Of Drinks Cabinets

Drinks cabinets have been fashionable over the years as a means of showing off ones taste. Popularised first amongst the gentry of London early in the 17th century, they have become synonymous across the globe with wealth & success. Indeed, the globe itself is a common design for drinks cabinets. At first glance a rotating 3D map of the world, but lift up the top half and you will find enough room inside for a handful of bottles & glasses.

Many noted furniture manufacturers of yesteryear designed & built drinks cabinets – names such as Gillow & Chippendale regularly produced this type of showcase furniture. Items are rare to the auction market and always command a four or even five figure sale price.

Nowadays you can buy high quality reproduction drinks cabinets for a little over 100. They offer all the style of the original designs, but without the price tag. However if money is no object, you can still pay several thousand pounds for handcrafted cabinets made with expensive woods like walnut & oak.

Typically, drinks cabinets are circular, about the height of a table, designed so that they can be placed anywhere in the room and opened from several sides. This improves functionality, in that you don’t need to move the bottles around if the one you want is behind the others. One such example is the classic Georgian drinks rotunda cabinet, which can be used to serve as well as store drinks. Other common designs include drinks cabinets which are built-in to larger cupboards.