Antique Painted Buffet

Before it stood in anyone’s dining room, this piece worked in an atelier, a counter someone cut and measured and made things on through a long working day. Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and dating to the early 20th century, it wears its age openly, old white paint rubbed back to bare wood along every edge over a grey, scuffed base, with a single long drawer above two panelled doors and a shelf within. A workshop counter was built to be useful before anything else, sturdy and deep and easy to wipe clean, and all those years of work are exactly what give it its face now. Sylvie would use it as a buffet or a kitchen counter, the drawer for linens or tools and the cupboard below for the rest, its worn paint doing all the decorating.