U 452

Few designers anywhere have created pieces that more distinctly shout mid-century modern than Jiri Jiroutek. Even as a young designer, Jiroutek reenvisioned the fabrication and functionality not only of cabinets and kitchen furnishings but also interior architecture.

However, it was the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair that ultimately inspired the Czech designer's funky, colorful, decorative yet multifunctional U-450 cabinets of the late ’50s and early ’60s that made Jiroutek a leading figure in the so-called Czech Brussels school.

Jiroutek's influence didn’t stop there. After revising an Ikea prototype design at the firm’s request in 1958, Jiroutek received an invitation from Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad to join the company in Stockholm. The designs he created there in the late 1960s, as well as others inspired by his work at the renowned manufacturer Interiér Praha, remain Ikea best sellers to this day.

Find vintage Jiri Jiroutek sideboards, chests of drawers and other furniture on 1stDibs.

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.