Carved Wood Sideboard Brutalist

Find many varieties of an authentic carved wood sideboard brutalist available at 1stDibs. A carved wood sideboard brutalist — often made from wood, oak and metal — can elevate any home. Find 21 options for an antique or vintage carved wood sideboard brutalist now, or shop our selection of 5 modern versions for a more contemporary example of this long-cherished piece. There are many kinds of the carved wood sideboard brutalist you’re looking for, from those produced as long ago as the 20th Century to those made as recently as the 21st Century. When you’re browsing for the right carved wood sideboard brutalist, those designed in mid-century modern, Scandinavian Modern and Art Deco styles are of considerable interest. Henning Kjærnulf, Charles Dudouyt and Lane Furniture each produced at least one beautiful carved wood sideboard brutalist that is worth considering.

Prices for a carved wood sideboard brutalist can differ depending upon size, time period and other attributes — at 1stDibs, they begin at $1,947 and can go as high as $14,500, while the average can fetch as much as $7,449.

The design of brutalist furniture encompasses that which is crafted, hewn and worked by hand — an aesthetic rebuke (or, at least, a counterpoint) to furniture that is created using 21st-century materials and technology. Lately, the word “brutalist” has been adopted by the realms of furniture design and the decorative arts to refer to chairs, cabinets, tables and accessory pieces such as mirror frames and lighting that are made of rougher, deeply textured metals and other materials that are the visual and palpable antithesis of the sleek, smooth and suave. 

ORIGINS OF BRUTALIST FURNITURE DESIGN

• Brutalism emerged during the mid-20th century
• Term coined by architecture critic Reyner Banham
• Originated in the United Kingdom
• Brutalist architecture gained popularity in the United States beginning in the early 1960s
• Inaugural brutalist projects include Unité d'habitation and the city of Chandigarh, India, both of which owe to influential architect Charles-Édouard “Le Corbusier” Jeanneret 
• Le Corbusier’s cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, designed hundreds of chairs, tables, cabinets and lamps for Chandigarh
• Informed by the Bauhaus, constructivism, modernism and the International Style; part of mid-century modernism
• Contrasted starkly with Beaux Arts style

CHARACTERISTICS OF BRUTALIST FURNITURE DESIGN 

• Use of industrial materials — tubular steel, concrete, glass, granite
• Prioritizes functionalism, minimalism and utilization of negative space
• Spare silhouettes, pronounced geometric shapes
• Stripped-down, natural look; rugged textures, modular construction
• Interiors featuring airy visual flow and reliance on neutral palettes

BRUTALIST FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW

• Le Corbusier
• Marcel Breuer
• Paul Evans
• Oscar Niemeyer
• Paul Rudolph
• Tom Greene

VINTAGE BRUTALIST FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The term brutalism — which derives from the French word brut, meaning “raw” — was coined by architecture critic Reyner Banham to describe an architectural style that emerged in the 1950s featuring monumental buildings, usually made of unornamented concrete, whose design was meant to project an air of strength and solidity.

Le Corbusier essentially created the brutalist style; its best-known iterations in the United States are the Whitney Museum of American Art, which was designed by Marcel Breuer, and Paul Rudolph's Yale Art and Architecture Building. The severe style might have been the most criticized architectural movement of the 20th century, even if it was an honest attempt to celebrate the beauty of raw material. But while the brutalist government buildings in Washington, D.C., seemingly bask in their un-beauty, brutalist interior design and decor is much more lyrical, at times taking on a whimsical, romantic quality that its exterior counterparts lack.

Paul Evans is Exhibit A for brutalist furniture design. His Sculpture Front cabinets laced with high-relief patinated steel mounts have become collector's items nonpareil, while the chairs, coffee table and dining table in his later Cityscape series and Sculpted Bronze series for Directional Furniture are perhaps the most expressive, attention-grabbing pieces in American modern design. Other exemplary brutalist designers are Silas Seandel, the idiosyncratic New York furniture designer and sculptor whose works in metal — in particular his tables — have a kind of brawny lyricism, and Curtis Jere, a nom-de-trade for the California team of Curtis Freiler and Jerry Fels, the bold makers of expressive scorched and sheared copper and brass mirror frames and wall-mounted sculptures.

Brutalist furniture and sculptures remain popular with interior designers and can lend unique, eccentric, human notes to an art and design collection in any home.

Find authentic vintage brutalist chairs, coffee tables, decorative objects and other furniture on 1stDibs.

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.