A 'chiffonier', also 'chiffonnier', may be used to describe at least two types of furniture. Its name comes directly from a French piece of furniture, the 'chiffoniere'.

The French name, which comes from the French for a rag-picker, suggests that it was originally intended as a receptacle for odds and ends which had no place elsewhere.

In British usage, a chiffonier is similar to a sideboard, but differentiated by its smaller size and by the enclosure of the whole of the front by doors.

It was one of the many curious developments of the mixed taste, at once cumbrous and bizarre, which prevailed in furniture during the Empire period in England.

The earliest 'chiffoniers' date from that time; they are usually of rosewood. Their fixtures were most commonly of brass, and there was very often a raised shelf with a pierced brass gallery at the back.

The doors were well panelled and often edged with brass-beading, while the feet were pads or claws, or, in the choicer examples, sphinxes in gilded bronze.

In North America, a 'chiffonier' is quite different. There it refers to a tall, narrow and elegant chest of drawers, frequently with a mirror attached on top.

A 'chiffonier' is mentioned in chapters 4 and 18 in Gene Stratton-Porter's last novel 'The Keeper of the Bees' (1925). It also appears five times in the novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J. D. Salinger. The word is also commonly used in the antique industry.

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