Out shopping the thrifts in Ventura, FT fell in love with what she calls a “throwback” style of furniture. She asked what I know about this vintage Bar Cabinet.
I know they’re elegant conversation starters, they add drama to any room, and they’re used today to show off a cocktail glass collection and a nice array of liquor bottles. They say to you, “Have a Drink; why not? I’m here!” Just what we need in the Pandemic, huh?
We Call This Style English Art Deco
As opposed to the more linear and exotic French Deco, and the hardly seen American Deco bar cabinets of the 1920s due to Prohibition. So, the form became hard to find until about 1935 when the fashion for a bar cabinet swept our nation. We still loved cocktail bars into the 1960s, when they became smaller and affordable.
FT’s Looks Very British
You see the style of FT’s MIGHT fit in an English Chippendale style room: walnut and burl walnut, with a maple interior elegantly finished for cocktail glasses, cocktail forks, shakers, and liquor bottles. The center section stops the show. Those top cupboard doors open to a copper mirrored interior for wet service, with gallery rails for holding shot glasses. Indeed the top raises, which sets off a light that makes the mirrored surface glow. That surface has a design of etched mirrored glass. WOWsa.
We see two drawers below for cocktail apparatus, and a sliding tray for pouring. Below, you see the actual liquor cabinet, flanked on either side by cabinet doors glazed with a copper color glass and ornate swelling mullions. The whole piece sits on carved ornate PAW feet. The effect feels meant to appear as intoxicating as what it once held.
Shades of Noel Coward and friends…sophisticates, and bygone glamor, creating all on its own, as a piece of furniture and a statement piece, a social gathering space.
The early European 1920s cocktail cabinets were made of exotic, easily carved softer woods. By the mid to late 1920’s we see the true Art Deco linear style and the harder woods used, more suitable to geometric construction.
Prohibition stopped social drinking (supposedly) in America, but the craze for bar cabinets flourished in 1925 in England. The wealthy ordered them in style that fit the English Drawing Room, like FT’s Chippendale inspired cabinet. You could also order one that hinted at English Tudor, etc. Nothing seemed inexpensive about these cabinets, yet what resided inside was slightly different than OUR present day booze cabinet over the fridge.
They saw drinking differently in those days
So, what actually spilled on this beauty?
Here are some of the most popular drinks in 1925, the year of this cabinet:
- French 75: a simple cocktail of gin, champagne, and lemon
- Gin Rickey: gin, lime juice and soda water NOTE: gin was the basis of many of the 1920’s era cocktails, both in London and New York, because, in London, one easily purchased gin. In Prohibition era New York, an amateur could MAKE gin.
- Bee’s Knees: gin, lemon juice, and of course honey
- Southside: muddled mint, orange bitters and gin
- Singapore Sling: gin, Grande Marnier, cherry liqueur, herbal liqueur, and pineapple juice
- Hanky Panky: London Dry Gin, sweet vermouth, and Fernet Branca Amaro NOTE: I discovered these drinks in The Manual, an online men’s magazine which reports the first female bartender, Ada Coleman, invented this aptly named drink in London at the American Bar at the Savoy.
- Sidecar (invented at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris) brandy, orange liqueur, and lemon juice.
- Bamboo: sherry and vermouth in equal parts, with orange bitters.
- Mary Pickford (after the famous 1920’s actress and pal of Charlie Chaplin): a drink of white rum, maraschino liqueur, pineapple juice and Grenadine = headache tomorrow.
Outside of imagining we are dressed wonderfully and attending a swanky London party, comfortable stationed in front of this bar, with one of those above drinks in our hands, the bar today is worth at least $4,000. I’d love to own one, and the clothes to go with it. Maybe the handsome playboy, too.