A secretary desk is a cupboard that turns into a desk. Six Met objects, French, English and American, show how the form was built, renamed and lightened, and what to ask before you buy one.
An antique display cabinet is furniture built to be looked into. Four museum objects show how the cabinet went from a room for treasures to a glazed showpiece, and what to ask when you meet one.
What is a credenza? The word meant trust before it named a cupboard. Museum examples from the Renaissance show how a tasting table became a display stage, a cupboard and a sideboard.
How French Art Deco furniture was shown at the 1925 Paris exposition: Ruhlmann's Hôtel du Collectionneur, eighteenth-century habits in new materials, and the pavilion's rooms in 1925 colour plates.
A Roman Baroque bedroom set, read piece by piece: the headboard and canopy, gilded carving against dark inlay, and how to tell a Baroque-style bed from a period one.
A sideboard began as a side table and became the dining room's heavy storage cabinet. This guide follows the form through Britannica, Merriam-Webster and four Met pieces, and says where the sideboard and buffet overlap.
A traditional Japanese bedroom is a room that sleeps at night and does something else by day. This guide follows the futon, the kimono-shaped coverlet, the closet and the pillow, using Morse's 1886 account, a modern Japanese cultural source and the Met's textiles.
Japonisme was the nineteenth-century Western craze for Japanese art. This guide follows it from ukiyo-e prints and the 1867 Paris fair into American and British furniture, and shows how to read the influence on a piece.
How to recognize French Empire furniture: the forms, woods and veneers, gilt-bronze and silver mounts, who made them, how it differs from nearby periods, and what to check before you buy.