Photo Du Jour : Vitrine

This piece of furniture, called une vitrine, or display cabinet, sits in our dining area and holds our everyday dishes, serving dishes, carafes, and a bunch of tart pans. We found it in a little shop/atelier in Saint-Aignan right after we moved in.

The lighting is the way it is because I was trying to capture the setting sun shining through one of the bedroom windows right onto the cabinet. I took the photo on an October afternoon, last year.

The woman who does these pieces buys the furniture new, then "antiques" it by applying layers of paint from dark to light and rubbing some of it off. It's a technique that I remember being popular in the US back in the seventies.

So we get the look of old but with the sturdiness of new. I guess it's cheating a bit, but it works for our more or less modern-style house. And the window in the vitrine matches the windows and doors in the room, right down to the antique color.