Top Furniture Guide

A wardrobe (sometimes called an “armoire” the French word) is a standing closet used for storing clothes. 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. 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. From these cupboards and lockers the modern wardrobe, with its hanging spaces, sliding shelves and drawers, evolved slowly.
In its movable form as an oak “hanging cupboard” it dates back to the early 17th century where it was an early export product to England from America since English Forest lands were over forested or reserved for the navy. Consequently, these were sometimes referred to as an Oakley. 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.)

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