The Wardrobe Schedule

Did You Know?

At that time it was an early export product from America to England, because English woodlands were over-harvested or reserved for the navy.

Consequently, the item was sometimes referred to as an Oakley.

The name of wardrobe was then given to a room in which the wall-space was filled with cupboards and lockers, the drawer being a comparatively modern invention.

The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommodation was provided for the sumptuous apparel of the great.

As a rule it was often of mahogany, but as satinwood and other hitherto scarce finely grained foreign woods began to be obtainable in considerable quantities, many elaborately and even magnificently inlaid wardrobes were made.Where Chippendale and his school had carved, Sheraton, Hepplewhite and their contemporaries achieved their effects by the artistic employment of deftly contrasted and highly polished woods.The penultimate step in the evolution of the wardrobe was taken when the central doors, which had previously enclosed merely the upper part, were carried to the floor, covering the drawers as well as the sliding shelves, and were often fitted with mirrors. CabinetFurnitureClothing containersCabinetsГардеробგარდერობიGarderobeGuardarroupasGarderob衣櫃衣櫃.

For probably a hundred years, such pieces, massive and cumbrous in form, but often with well-carved fronts, were produced in moderate numbers; then the gradual diminution in the use of oak for cabinet-making produced a change of fashion in favor of the more plentiful American walnut.(Ironically, the virgin American forests became successively Oak, then Maple with successive deforestation episodes.)Walnut succeeded oak as the favourite material for furniture, but hanging wardrobes in walnut appear to have been made very rarely, although clothes presses, with drawers and sliding trays, were frequent.During a large portion of the 18th century the tallboy was much used for storing clothes.Wardrobe size: A common feature was to base future size on the eight small men method.