Antique 18th Century Oak Coffer | M-5484 | Penderyn Antiques (2024)

FAQs

What is an oak coffer? ›

Antique coffers are plain and simple country pieces of period antique furniture and are one of the earliest forms of furniture on record. The coffer would usually be constructed from planks of solid oak with a hinged lid and be of simple pegged construction or with the old iron clout nails.

coffer, in furniture, most commonly a portable container for valuables, clothes, and other goods, used from the Middle Ages onward. It was normally a wooden box covered in leather, studded with nails, and fitted with carrying handles.

A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.

Other words for a chest include: coffer, a term used from Medieval times onwards for a storage box, often with a rounded top and covered with leather, and now often implying a use for storing money or other valuable objects.

Coffers were the Europeans' first cased pieces. They started out as six-sided boxes with a lift-off lid. As time went on, craftsmen included hinges and locks. In the 1500s, the design took another leap forward as woodworkers realized the value of paneled construction.

A coffer is a large, strong chest used for storing valuable objects such as money or gold and silver. The coffers of an organization consist of the money that it has to spend, imagined as being collected together in one place.

mid-13c., "box or chest used for keeping valuables," from Old French cofre "a chest" (12c., Modern French coffre), from Latin cophinus "basket" (see coffin). Hence coffers, in a figurative sense, "a treasury; the wealth and pecuniary resources of a person, institution, etc.," late 14c.

The term coffer dates to medieval times and is used to describe a lockable wooden chest constructed for the purpose of storing valuable items such as gold or silver. First used in the 13th century, the term is a derivation of the Latin word 'cophinus', meaning a large basket or storage hamper.

A coffer is a large, strong chest used for storing valuable objects such as money or gold and silver. The coffers of an organization consist of the money that it has to spend, imagined as being collected together in one place.

coffer, in architecture, a square or polygonal ornamental sunken panel used in a series as decoration for a ceiling or vault. The sunken panels were sometimes also called caissons, or lacunaria, and a coffered ceiling might be referred to as lacunar.