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Painted bedside cabinets
During the past few years the painted bedside cabinet has become very fashionable.  So it might be surprising to learn that painted furniture actually has a history nearly as long as furniture in wood finishes.  The early furniture makers did not have access to the wide variety of stains, waxes, sealants, varnishes, lacquers and so forth that are available today.  Indeed most early wood finishes would probably have been a coating of beeswax or tallow, simply to provide some protection from dirt and damp.  Paints, such as they existed, were in a small range of colours limited by the various animal, vegetable and mineral products available to create colour, such as burnt limestone (making limewash), cows’ blood and dye-making plants such as the madders plant.   

It appears the fashion for painting furniture coincided with the spread through Europe and Britain of the Renaissance and Baroque styles during the Jacobean era of the 17th Century.  This was a movement that appealed to the highest standards of achievement and sophistication in all fields of human endeavour.  It is easy to imagine therefore, the appreciation people would have had for the difficulties involved in first creating paint, then successfully applying it to wood, and ultimately in producing items of painted furniture that looked so completely different from the wooden furniture that had been the norm.  This would not have included painted bedside cabinets as these were a much later development.  

Painted furniture for the pure in heart?
The Puritan movements in Britain and Western Europe despised any form of frivolity or lavish lifestyle so it might be thought that painted furniture would have fallen foul of this outlook, but this turned out not to be the case.  When Protestant groups such as the Shakers emigrated to America they took examples of painted furniture (though not painted bedside cabinets) with them and also made painted furniture after arriving in the New World.  The trend for Shaker style to move away from painted furniture is attributed to a cabinet maker called Henry Lapp of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  His furniture copied the unpainted style of his Welsh neighbours.

It was during the Victorian era when the bedside cabinet as we might know it first appeared in any great quantity.  It might be supposed that the Gothic Revival of the period dictated that dark oak was the universal finish for the furniture of the well-to-do, but famous designers of the period such as William Burges (1827 – 1881) were responsible for highly decorated painted furniture, often in styles of an imagined medieval age.   

Painted furniture diverges into contemporary and shabby chic
In the latter part of the 20th Century, painted furniture has undergone something of a divergence into two distinct categories: contemporary and shabby chic.  The contemporary styles of painted bedside cabinets and painted furniture in general have simple lines and minimal decoration.  Some feature wood finishes to tops.  These bedsides are usually painted in light colours such as cream or ivory and are great for adding light and brightness to a room. It is also a popular choice for bathrooms, conservatories and interiors aiming for a fresh, seaside appeal.   

Painted shabby chic furniture, also sometimes referred to as French-style or French painted furniture has a completely different ancestry and purpose.  It originated in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s when, in an attempt at a fairer distribution of the nation’s wealth, taxation of landowners and the owners of grand properties was greatly increased.  This, together with a shortage of cheap skilled labour, meant that many of the larger, more affluent homes could no longer be maintained to the necessary standard.   

It gradually became at first acceptable and then positively fashionable, to have interiors furnished with elegant pieces that were not just patinated with age but had a distinctly worn appearance – and the shabby chic look was born.  Although this applied to both painted and wood finished furniture as the look became more fashionable ‘shabby chic’ furniture was increasingly sourced from France where painted Rococo styles had remained popular amongst the rural population long after its passing elsewhere.   

Genuine faded antiques and painted bedsides could not supply the growing demand, so an industry has grown up around producing new furniture that has many of the style attributes of the faded elegant, shabby chic furniture.