Where a house kept everything it was proud of. From the country just outside Lille and dating to the 19th century, this rare cupboard comes in two parts, the top a glazed cabinet with slatted shelves made to show off a household’s plates. Below, the buffet’s center folds down on its original chains into a work surface, set over paneled cupboards and a softly scalloped apron, all of it stripped back to a pale honeyed wood. In the farmhouses of French Flanders a buffet like this was the proud heart of the kitchen, where a family displayed its best faience behind glass and kept its linen, its bread, and its everyday china below. Sylvie would give it a whole wall in the kitchen or dining room, plates and glasses behind the glass, the fold-down center set as a little bar, and everything you would rather not look at tucked away underneath.
