Dresser

Many people have a dresser of some sort in their homes, usually in the kitchen or dining room, and even more people would really love to have one! I think I would quite like one, actually.

Now when I came to look up a little more information about dressers I was surprised to see that the word can mean many different things; I knew, obviously, that a dresser is someone who dresses ie clothes someone else, for example an actor being helped with his or her costume, but I didn’t know it was also a large motorbike. I know the word dress in the context of stone masonry so I guess a stone dresser does just that, dresses, stone, but I didn’t know a grinding dresser dressed the surface of a grinding wheel.

Back to dressers, meaning a large piece of furniture, usually consisting of a set of drawers and cupboards at the bottom, then a large set of open shelves going up against the wall. It is a way of storing all the things you might need in a kitchen, and the top of the cupboard part can have other things put on them… and that is where I think it wouldn’t really be a good idea for me to have a dresser (even if our house was big enough) I am so terribly, terribly untidy, the top surface and all the shelves would soon be covered and filled with all sorts of junk.

The prized type of dresser in the UK are Welsh dressers which are expensive (and properly so) solid wooden pieces, often with little decorative carvings, and used to display the best china. One interesting feature n Scottish dressers is the porridge drawer. Porridge is a satisfying and delicious dish of oats cooked with milk or water and traditionally served with salt; in Scotland in the old days a big pan of porridge was made and poured into the drawer which apparently was lined with tin (not sure poorer folk would have had that!) and the porridge would set and could be then cut into strips or pieces as a portable meal. I first read about a porridge drawer in ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’ by John Buchan… when I told people about the porridge drawer they said I was mistaken and I began to think I was, that I had misread the episode with the hero being entertained by the old Scottish couple… but no, I remembered it correctly!

The dresser in my featured picture was in this lovely café in Minehead, lots of interesting bits and pieces, but think of the dusting!