Adventures in furniture inspired by a Benjamin Dreyer posting on Facebook yesterday:
Goshamighty, I completely forgot to mention, when I posted my Old Acquaintance piece a few hours ago, that in commencing this morning to read John Van Druten’s 1942 The Damask Cheek (co-written with one Lloyd Morris), I learned a new word! It’s cellarette: “a movable cabinet or container, often made of wood, designed to store and secure alcoholic beverages.”
If there’s a more perfect word to turn up in a play set in “The library of MRS. RANDALL’s house in the East Sixties, New York. December 1909,” [the setting of The Damask Cheek] I can’t think of it.
BD locates the sociocultural milieu of the item (and then its name as well) as privileged urban upper class — traditional, elegant, and elite — and we will see that his classdar is first-rate.
I then broke in with the news that I have one of these things, a very nice one, of Danish design, made of teak, on wheels, with a durable bar top, in two parts that slide open to reveal the storage spaces within (there will be photos). I am neither elegant nor elite — I have several good points, but they are not these — but this clever and handsome object suits me (and it was mine and Jacques’s, and before that mine and Ann’s, so it comes with with waves of sweet memory; I will soon pass it on to my grand-child Opal).
But first, the cellaret / cellarette. The object and the name.
Dictionary time. The brief version from NOAD:
noun cellaret (also cellarette): historical a cabinet for keeping bottles of wine and liquor.
The etymology is straightforward: cellar as in wine cellar, plus the diminutive suffix –et(te) (compare cigarette): ‘a miniature cellar (for wine or stronger drink)’.
The OED entry (last revised in 2008) for the noun cellaret (variant spelling cellarette):
A case of cabinet-work made to hold wine bottles, etc. Later also: a sideboard with compartments for the same purpose.
The first cite is from 1786 [from a classy furniture catalog] A mahogany cellaret, on casters, with brass hoops and handles, fine wood. Then literary quotes from Thackeray, Disraeli, and H.G. Wells, with early cites in passages in elegant, elite settings (like the one Benjamin Dreyer reported on); the class locale then broadens in other quotes through to 2003.
Cellaret(te)s are to be compared with bar carts: open-sided, multi-level carts on wheels for transporting the works for making drinks, plus bar snacks.
My Danish teak delight. We just call it our bar, and we tended to use it like a small sideboard (NOAD: ‘a flat-topped piece of furniture with cupboards and drawers, placed along a wall and used for storing dishes, glasses, and table linen’), but it’s certainly a cellaret. Three views of the object (photos by Opal Armstrong Zwicky):
(#1) Side view (next to a 3-level cart with my microwave on it
(#2) Slid open to show one of the storage compartments; another is in the back, and in between them there’s a little shelf for bar gear (corkscrews and the like)
(#3) Top view, slid open, focused on the narrow shelf
My title. “Cellarettes and cabinet drinks” is a play on the title of a Rufus Wainwright song, “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk”. I had RW on my mind because my linguistics colleague (at the University of Sussex) Lynne Murphy has tickets for two nights of RW concerts (envy). From Wikipedia:
“Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” is a song written and performed by the Canadian–American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. It appears as the opening track on his second studio album, Poses (2001). The song addresses decadence and desire, and has been called an “ode to subtle addictions and the way our compulsions rule our lives”.
… In his review for Allmusic, Matthew Greenwald wrote that the song “combines classic Gershwin / Brian Wilson pop feels along with a strong sense of French cabaret show tunes”, and called the shifts in modulation coupled with dissonant chords “intoxicating”.
The first verse:
Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I like’s a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me
You can watch the official music video of “Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk” here.
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