credenza
A credenza is a dining room sideboard or display cabinet, usually made of burnished and polished wood and decorated with marquetry. The top would often be made of marble, or another decorative liquid- and heat-resistant stone. • Illustration — 1950s-style credenza • Illustration — 15th- or 16th-century Italian credenza • Illustration — Modern built-in or fitted credenza The credenza started as a rough table with a cloth draped over it. In early 14th-century Italy, it took on an architectural form with column and pilaster decorations.
Also recorded as Credenzas
credenza
CC BY-SA 3.0
- Field
- sideboard · cupboard
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for credenza. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
gnd · 243870-7 · wikidata · Q16676881 · wikipedia · Credenza
In this article
Etymology
In modern times, a credenza is more often a type of sideboard used in the home or restaurant. In dining rooms, it is typically made from wood and used as a platform to serve buffet meals. In restaurant kitchens, made from stainless steel, it provides a side surface and storage cupboards. It can also be used to refer to office storage; both above and below a desk space.
Originally in Italian the name meant belief or trust (etymologically connected to the English word "credence"). In the 16th century, the act of credenza was the tasting of food and drinks by a servant for a lord or other important person (such as the pope or a cardinal) in order to test for poison. The name may have passed then to the room where the act took place, then to the furniture.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Credenza, revision 1371447939 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Merriam-Webster Online: Credenza: "a sideboard, buffet, or bookcase patterned after a Renaissance CREDENCE; especially: one without legs" .
- 2.Credenza is in the March 2014 online update of the OED as "A sideboard, free-standing cupboard, or storage chest, orig. Italian or of Italian style", expanding the 1989 print edition's "A sideboard". It also appears in OED as Credence, as well as in John Gloag, A Short Dictionary of Furniture (London, 1977), where Credence is described as "a small side-table for vessels, used as a serving table", noting 16th-century usage and quoting John Britton, A Dictionary of the Art and Archaeology of the Middle Ages 1838: "a shelf-like projection placed across a piscina, or within a niche as a place for sacred vessels used at mass; also a buffet or sideboard for plate".
- 3.Payne. Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Furniture. Harper & Row. 24. 1989. 9780060161415.
- 4.credenza. Dizionario Etimologico Online.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority record
General reference
Connections
Knowledge graph
Connections
Each connection was recorded deliberately, with the basis for it kept on the internal record.
Broader subject
1- credence tableTerminology
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Furniture
924 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- court cupboardTerminology
- Cracked Ice screenTerminology
- cradleTerminology
- credence tableTerminology
- crepe makerTerminology
- Crucifixion RetableTerminology
- Crucifixion TriptychTerminology
- cubicleTerminology
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own an object connected with credenza?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.