From this page you will find links to many varieties of dining room furniture including: oak, pine, painted, rustic, reclaimed, dark wood, Mexican and Indian, ash, budget and bespoke dining room furniture (phew!). These ranges are provided by our top suppliers who include
ASL, Core Products, CPW, Devonshire Pine Ltd, DFP or Direct Forest Products, Kettle Containers, PD Global and YP Furniture.
Although you will not see any ranges that are sold by high street retailers such as John Lewis, Next, British Home Stores or Marks & Spencer, we believe the quality of our products is at least as good or, in some cases much better, than the offerings from these retailers and is almost always much cheaper furniture. In some cases we do stock ranges that are very similar or even identical ranges but sold under a different name.
It is gratifying to note that our dining room furniture ranges are often viewed as a worthy alternative to the furniture ranges of the former furniture retailer,
Durham Pine.
Things you may not know about dining room furnitureThe dining room as we know it evolved from the ‘parler’ rooms that developed during the Middle Ages. These were small rooms situated next to the Main Hall in the houses of the nobility. Here meals could be taken in greater comfort and, given the religious persecutions of the time, greater privacy.
Dining room furniture of the time would typically have consisted of a
table and chairs and a livery or service cupboard. This is described in Frederick Litchfield’s
Illustrated History of Furniture as consisting of "three stages or shelves standing on four turned legs, with a drawer for table linen. Originally they were not enclosed, but the mugs or drinking vessels were hung on hooks, and were taken down and replaced after use. A jug and basin was also part of the livery cupboard’s equipment and this was used by servants to "empty and then wash the mugs after use".
Gradually the dining room took on a clearer identity of its own and by the mid 17th Century it was accepted practice after dinner for the ladies to withdraw (hence the creation of the withdrawing, or drawing room) and the gentlemen to enjoy Brandy and cigars. The aforementioned livery cupboards were also replaced by
sideboards.
This was not the simple evolution that might be assumed but actually quite a circuitous route. In the first instance, the architectural fashion for symmetry in rooms during the 17th Century had resulted in the practice of creating large cupboards behind the ‘dummy’ doors installed to match the real doorways.
These proved the ideal place to store glass, crockery, table linen and so forth in a dining room and reduced the necessity for livery cupboards. But after the middle of the 18th Century these extra doors and enclosed cupboards gradually disappeared. Side tables were the new fashion and these were used flanked by cupboards for hot plates on one side and wine on the other. Various other features were added, such as wine coolers and water containers and brackets for holding the highly valuable cases of cutlery.
These various items were ultimately condensed into a single piece of furniture, the
sideboard. At this point it is interesting to note the distinction between dressers and sideboards.
Dressers were used as places on which to prepare or dress food, whereas sideboards as can be seen from the above, were places from which the prepared food would be served. Dining rooms remained largely the preserve of the wealthy until the Victorian era. By this time the increasing wealth of the middle classes meant they could afford houses with separate dining rooms. As a consequence the demand for furniture such as sideboards, mushroomed and many of the earliest examples of usable antique sideboards date from this period.
One of the most obvious pieces of dining room furniture, the
dining table, had also undergone considerable evolution. Early dining tables, from the Middle Ages, were literally large boards or table tops resting on trestles. Fixed frames gradually replaced these trestle structures.
The difficulty arose that when a larger table was needed for example when entertaining guests, this could only be achieved by butting two or more tables against each other. It was not until 1800 that a successful design of extending table was invented and patented by the cabinet maker Richard Gillow.
In modern times, changing social structures mean that the dining room is in decline. Meal times, particularly in the UK, have become much less formal with even members of the same household eating at different times and perhaps even in different places around the home. That said, the dining table is still regarded by most as an essential item of furniture for social entertaining. It provides the opportunity to share conversation over a meal in the privacy of the home – a true communion between family and friends that has yet to be supplanted by modern technology.
If the need for dining tables continues to exist, then
dining chairs will inevitably retain their importance. Sideboards may no longer be used as a place from which to serve food, but a survey of sideboard-owning households would undoubtedly show the majority to be filled with drinks, glasses, table linen and a host of other dining or entertaining-related paraphernalia. Today many houses have ‘kitchen diners’ in place of separate dining rooms in a development perhaps reminiscent of the Great Hall style of living of the Middle Ages. But, even if the dining room itself is disappearing, the need for dining room furniture remains strong.