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BUFFET

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Originally appearing in Volume V04, Page 757 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BUFFET , a piece of See also:

furniture which may be open or closed, or partly open and partly closed, for the reception of dishes, See also:china, See also:glass and See also:plate. The word may also signify a See also:long See also:counter at which one stands to eat and drink, as at a restaurant, or—which would appear to be the See also:original meaning—the See also:room in which the counter stands. The word, like the thing it represents, is See also:French. The buffet is the descendant of the See also:credence, and the ancestor of the See also:sideboard, and consequently has a See also:close See also:affinity to the See also:dresser. Few articles of furniture, while pre-serving their original purpose, have varied more widely in See also:form. In the beginning the buffet was a tiny apartment, or See also:recess, little larger than a See also:cupboard, separated from the room which it served either by a See also:breast-high See also:balustrade or by pillars. It See also:developed into a definite piece of furniture, varying from simplicity to splendour, but always provided with one or more' See also:flat spaces, or broad shelves, for the reception of such necessaries of the dining-room as were not placed upon the table. The See also:early buffets were sometimes carved with the utmost elaboration; the See also:Renaissance did much to vary their form and refine their See also:ornament. Often the See also:lower See also:part contained receptacles as in the characteristic See also:English See also:court-cupboard. The rage for See also:collecting china in the See also:middle of the 18th See also:century was responsible for a new form—the high glazed back, fitted with shelves, for the display of See also:fine pieces of crockery-See also:ware. This, however, was hardly a true buffet, and was the very See also:antithesis of the757 See also:primary arrangement, in which the huge goblets and beakers and fantastic pieces of plate, of which so extremely few examples are See also:left, were displayed upon the open " gradines." The tiers of shelves, with or without a glass front, which are still often found in Georgian houses, were sometimes called buffets—in See also:short, any dining-roorn receptacle for articles that were not immediately wanted came at last to See also:bear the name. In See also:France the See also:variations of type were even more numerous than in See also:England, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a commode from a buffet.

In the latter part of the 18th century the buffet occasion-ally took the form of a See also:

console table.

End of Article: BUFFET

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BUFFET, LOUIS JOSEPH (1818-1898)

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