cupboard, type of furniture that originated in the Middle Ages as a board or table for cups. The word also may have been used for a stepped sideboard and later for open shelves, both to display plate. Since the 16th century the name has referred to a case fitted with doors.
Byzantine and Romanesque cupboards were of simple board construction, though they were sometimes decorated with elaborate painted designs. A fine example of about 1200, painted inside and out with pictures of saints on a gesso ground, survives in the cathedral at Halberstadt, Ger. Such freestanding cupboards were made for churches long before they were in common use in domestic interiors. The latter stage was reached only in the 14th century, when portable furniture began to be preferred to fixed objects that stood as permanent parts of a building. Many of the finest medieval cupboards were finely carved with Gothic designs closely following architectural motifs and forms.
Late 15th-century cupboards for food storage, such as the English livery cupboard, had ventilating holes, often taking the form of carved open tracery. Another variety was the hall, or parlour, cupboard, an enclosed version of the cupboard for display. The court cupboard, for example, was important in Tudor and Stuart times in England but lost fashion after the Restoration.
By the 17th century the cupboard was taking over the role of the chest as the principal piece of storage furniture. In certain parts of Europe, such as southern Germany, the cupboard may have developed from a chest placed on another chest, each opening at the front rather than at the top. For a long time cupboards were divided in two, horizontally, with handles sometimes attached to the sides of each section to facilitate moving.
With the increasing importance of the cupboard, decoration became more lavish, taking the form of panelling, carving, and intarsia (mosaic of wood). Italy led the way in the 16th century with some of the finest intarsia panels. Panels were rectangular and sometimes contained finely carved scenes, or motifs, accompanied by carved friezes (horizontal bands). In the 17th century the Low Countries popularized a heavy form of cupboard, called in Dutch a kast (or, in the United States, kas), in which the panels were raised and three evenly spaced twisted columns supported a heavy cornice, the whole resting on squat bun (or ball) feet. Northern Germany was particularly noted for its massive cupboards, which were the most important pieces of furniture in the house.
The press was a tall cupboard that held bed linen, curtains, and clothes as international trade provided for a greater number of luxury goods in the well-to-do household. In the early 18th century a press composed of a cupboard above a chest of drawers became popular in England, and its use spread to the Continent. Until modern times no major advances in cupboard design were made after the 18th century.