Tallboys, Highboys, and Lowboys
By Christa Terry…or as I prefer to think of them, boys boys boys! All right, not really, but many people see these terms and what comes to mind is men of varying statures as the modern individual is seldom schooled in furniture jargon. To combat ignorance and making shopping that much easier, here’s a guide to tallboys, highboys, and lowboys. I’m thinking perhaps that it will be the first of many posts clearing up misconceptions where furniture and decor are concerned.
A highboy is a tall double chest of drawers marked by a wider base of two levels of drawers and an upper section consisting of three narrower stacks of drawers topped by a series of even small drawers. Known as a best-on-stand or a chest-on-chest, the highboy’s name is derived from a corruption of the French bois (“wood”).
A tallboy is similarly marked by a wider base of a double chest of drawers but is topped with a wardrobe. Highboys are frequently mislabeled at tallboys, which is a shame because it makes these beautiful storage pieces more difficult to find. Tallboys cab be further differentiated by the fact that they may have five, six, or even seven long drawers with only two short ones.
And a lowboy is a small table with one drawer or two rows of drawers, named so as to differentiate it from its loftier cousins, the tallboys and the highboys. Just picture the bottom half of a highboy or tallboy, and you have yourself a right and proper lowboy.
