The French call a long sideboard like this an enfilade, for the way its doors run side by side in a single row, and in a country house it held everything a dining room needed close at hand, the linens and the plates, the glasses and the bottles. Found in Lyon and made in the early 20th century, this one keeps its old sage-green paint, worn soft over the years and rubbed back to bare wood in places, with four drawers above four doors fastened by iron latches. Paint was how a country maker turned an everyday sideboard into something worth looking at, and a finish like this one, faded and worn by decades of hands opening and closing it, is the kind no one can fake. Sylvie stands it in the living room beneath a wood-framed mirror, a stone horse head at one end and an old black clay jar at the other, a row of books lined up between them.
