Cottage Furniture Basics
Cottage Cabinets
Use this dining room piece to store and display your cottage-worthy dishware.
BY VICTORIA VAN VLEAR
The china cabinet is a large piece of dining room furniture meant to store and display beautiful dishware. The piece first became popular in England in the 1600s, when porcelain china was growing in popularity. Portuguese explorers and merchants had been the first to bring porcelain china from China in the early 1500s, and it became a desired collectible and usable piece for the nobility. As quality dishware became more accessible to the lower classes, the china cabinet also grew to have a place in the everyday home—including the cottage, of course.