Corinna Warm Clair Sideboard

While luxury furniture designer Corinna Warm has lived in Berlin, Milan, London and Los Angeles, she has garnered herself a place in the center of the design world regardless of her physical address. Her commitment to excellence is exemplified in her designs for pendant lights, floor lamps, side tables and more — she works with natural materials and sleek, understated forms to create pieces that offer comfort and elegance in any living space.

Warm moved from her home in Berlin, Germany, to attend the prestigious Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, UK, initially intending to study graphic design before switching to product design after having visited the campus’s workshop facilities. After graduation, she moved to Milan, Italy. Warm worked for well-known designers such as Shin and Tomoko Azumi, Isao Hosoe and Tom Dixon, among others. Warm returned to London to accept a position working for David Linley, a British furniture designer widely known for his focus on craft. This would be a pivotal moment in her career — with Linley, the nephew of Queen Elizabeth II and founder of the royal cabinetmaker workshop Linley in 1985, Warm encountered the principles of cabinetmaking and the fundamentals of well-made, durable furnishings. She developed new skills and a clear mindset in her approach to design. 

At the 2007 London Design Festival, Warm successfully launched Studio Warm, initially a furniture brand recognized for its merging of contemporary and classical elements. Today it is a multi-disciplinary design consultancy.

In 2008, Warm opened her London studio, where she offers her luxury furniture designs, expertly crafted using traditional techniques. Riding the wave of her massive success in Europe, Warm expanded her studio to Los Angeles, California. She splits her time between London and L.A. 

Warm finds inspiration for her bespoke work where her clients see it. It could be the natural world, fashion, film or even music. She avoids social media trends and spends her time offline and hands-on. Choosing to work directly with her makers and craftspeople, Warm prefers an immersed approach to her work. She sees design as more than style and function — furniture is the heart of every home and centers around creating memories, hence the quality of her work must be superior, as she intends to deliver something that can be part of a legacy.

On 1stDibs, find a selection of Corinna Warm tables, lighting, case pieces and storage cabinets.

Once simply boards made of wood that were used to support ceremonial dining, sideboards have taken on much greater importance 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.

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. 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 are more to your liking than an 18th-century mahogany sideboard with decorative inlays by Hepplewhite, 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, new and vintage sideboards to choose from.