A chest of drawers, also called (especially in North American English

North American English

North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...

) a dresser or a bureau, is a piece of furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

 that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers stacked one above another. A chifforobe (from chiffonier + wardrobe) is a combination of a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.

Chests of drawers have traditionally been made and used for storing clothing

Clothing

Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...

, especially underwear, socks, and other items not normally hung in or otherwise stored in a closet

Closet

A closet is a small and enclosed space, a cabinet, or a cupboard in a house or building used for general storage or hanging clothes. A closet for food storage is usually referred to as a pantry...

. They are usually placed in a bedroom

Bedroom

A bedroom is a private room where people usually sleep for the night or relax during the day.About one third of our lives are spent sleeping and most of the time we are asleep, we are sleeping in a bedroom. To be considered a bedroom the room needs to have bed. Bedrooms can range from really simple...

 for this purpose, but can actually be used to store anything that will fit inside and can be placed anywhere in a house or another place. Various personal sundry items are also often stored in a chest of drawers. It has a long history as one of the stand-bys of a carpenter

Carpentry

A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....

's workshop. A typical chest is approximately rectangular in overall shape and often has short legs at the bottom corners for placement on the floor.

Chests of drawers often come in 5-, 6-, and 7-drawer varieties, with either a single or a double top drawer. The chest illustrated at right would be described as a '2 over 5 chest-on-chest', the latter term deriving from the fact that at one time it would have been made as 2 separable pieces. They are commonly made of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

, similar to many other kinds of furniture, but of course can be made of other materials. The inside of the drawers can be accessed by pulling them out at the front side. It is often placed so that the back side faces a wall since access to the back is not necessary. The lateral sides are also usually made such that they can be placed against a wall or in a corner. Although they can be plain in appearance, chests of drawers can also be made with a fancy or ornamental appearance, including finishes and various external color tones. Traditionally, drawers would slide out on smooth wood rails. Most modern cabinets use roll-out shelf

Roll-out shelf

A roll-out shelf, also known as a glide-out shelf, pull-out shelf or slide-out shelf is a shelf that can be moved forward on slides in order to more easily reach the contents stored in the back of a cupboard or cabinet. The slide mechanism can also be found in modern chests of drawers...

 sliders, made of metal, with rollers.

Most chests of drawers fall into one of two types: those which are about waist-high or bench-high and those (usually with more drawers) which are about shoulder-high. Both types typically have a flat surface on top. Waist-high chests often have a mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...

 placed vertically on top, which is often bought with the piece. While a user is getting dressed or otherwise preparing their grooming, he or she can look at themselves in the mirror to check their appearance. Some users may keep lamps for lighting on top of either kind of dresser, and decorative items or photos are sometimes added for appearance.

History

In late medieval Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 the chest came into widespread use, especially in homes of the nobility. This type, also known as a coffer was more or less a simple joined wooden box with a hinged lid. It may or may not have stood on feet. An early transitional phase was the installation of one drawer beneath this main compartment. A number of early pieces from the seventeenth century are extant of oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 manufacture from England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and corresponding seventeenth century pieces of French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

 have survived. Some of the early surviving English specimens are from the Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

 period. Nutting ascribes the earliest piece in his Furniture Treasury to "before 1649".

Styles

Mule Chest: A chest commonly wider than it is high and deep. A mule chest has drawers in its base and a hinged top, beneath which there are either two short drawers or one long one. This form, introduced in England in the 1600, was popular for 100 years in England and colonial America.

Contemporary forms

The chest of drawers continues to be a popular item for contemporary designers. A notable form was designed by Dutch designer Tejo Remy in 1991. His "You Can't Lay Down Your Memories" chest of drawers is built up from 20 second hand drawers sourced from local flea markets in Europe tied together with a jute strap. This method means no two productions are the same. The Museum of Modern Art acquired one of the earliest made.

See also

• Chifforobe
• Commode
  Commode
  A commode, commode with legs, or commode on legs is any of several pieces of furniture. The word commode comes from the French word for "convenient" or "suitable", which in turn comes from the Latin adjective commodus, with similar meanings.Originally, in French furniture, a commode introduced...
  
  
• Chiffonier
• Dresser
• Highboy
• Lowboy
  Lowboy
  A lowboy is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers. Both were favourite pieces of the 18th century, both in England and in the United States; the lowboy was most frequently used as a dressing-table , but sometimes as...
  
  
• Nightstand
  Nightstand
  A nightstand, alternatively night table or bedside table, is a small table or cabinet designed to stand beside a bed or elsewhere in a bedroom. It serves the role of a coffee table during nighttime hours, at a persons bedside....
  
  
• Tansu
  Tansu
  Tansu is the word for chest, chest of drawers or cupboard in Japanese. It is often used in the West to refer to traditional Japanese chests, handcrafted and made of fine woods, such as Hinoki , Keyaki , Kuri , Sugi and Kiri .Many collectors focus on finding antique Tansu...