1960s Hutch Dresser - highly sought after

A hutch is an

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

word for a particular type of

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating ( tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks) ...

. The term is now usually used to describe a set of shelves or cabinets placed on top of a lower unit with a counter and either

drawer A drawer is a box-shaped container inside a piece of furniture that can be pulled out horizontally to access its contents. Drawers are built into numerous types of furniture, including cabinets, chests of drawers (bureaus), desks, and the ...

s or cabinets. Hutches are often seen in the form of

desk A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading, writing, or using equipment such as a computer. Desks of ...

dining room A dining room is a room for consuming food. In modern times it is usually adjacent to the kitchen for convenience in serving, although in medieval times it was often on an entirely different floor level. Historically the dining room is furnis ...

, or

kitchen A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running wate ...

furniture. It is frequently referred to by furniture aficionados as a hutch dresser.

Origin

In the 18th and early 19th century, however, the term hutch or hutch table referred to a tabletop set onto a base in such a way that when the table was not in use, the top pivoted to a vertical position and became the back of a chair or wider

settee A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield, is a cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people (although it is not uncommon for a single person to use a couch alone). It is commonly found in the form of a bench with up ...

.In

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...

this type of furniture is known as a monks bench. This was a very useful form at a time when many homes had a large room used for multiple functions, because it allowed a large dining table to swing up and out of the way.

Features

Typically fashioned from

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...

, modern hutch dressers can range from country cottage style (frequently solid timber, sometimes adorned with ornate

scrollwork The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which l ...

) to the sleek lines of the wood grain veneer style popularised throughout the 1960s to 1980s. Many hutches from recent decades feature a

mirror A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the im ...

in the back of the upper shelving to give the additional appearance of depth and to better display the fineries kept within (in a similar manner to a

china cabinet A china cabinet is a piece of furniture, usually with glass fronts and sides, used to hold and display porcelain ("china") or other ceramics. Typical china held in such cabinets often includes cups, plates, bowls, and glasses. Along with a table, ...

). Amongst the most desirable of the 1960s veneered kind are those featuring a fold down

liquor Liquor (or a spirit) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit drink, distilled beverage or h ...

compartment where the fold down compartment door serves to increase the

worktop A countertop, also counter top, counter, benchtop, worktop (British English) or kitchen bench (Australian or New Zealand English), bunker (Scottish English) is a raised, firm, flat, and horizontal surface. They are built for work in kitchens or o ...

area for setting out the

glassware upTypical drinkware The list of glassware includes drinking vessels (drinkware) and tableware used to set a table for eating a meal, general glass items such as vases, and glasses used in the catering industry. It does not include laboratory glas ...

and preparing a drink. These

compartments often feature a mirror at the back and frequently the inner

wood veneer In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood and sometimes bark, usually thinner than 3 mm (1/8 inch), that typically are glued onto core panels (typically, wood, particle board or medium-density fiberboard) to produce flat pane ...

surface of the door (becoming the worktop surface) is polished to a high lustre, increasing the overall effect thus impressing guests and onlookers.

Notes

References

* Furniture {{Furniture-stub

Origin

Features

See also

Notes

References