Editing Buffet (section)

===As displays of wealth===
[[Image:Anrichte-Kempinski.jpg|thumb|Modern [[sideboard]] furniture, used for serving food]]

While the possession of gold and silver has been a measure of [[solvency]] of a regime, the display of it, in the form of plates and vessels, is more a political act and a gesture of [[conspicuous consumption]]. The 16th-century French term ''buffet'' applied both to the display itself and to the furniture on which it was mounted, often draped with rich textiles, but more often as the century advanced the word described an elaborately carved cupboard surmounted by tiers of shelves. In England, such a buffet was called a '''court cupboard'''. Prodigal displays of plate were probably first revived at the fashionable court of [[Duchy of Burgundy|Burgundy]] and adopted in France. The [[Baroque]] displays of silver and gold that were affected by [[Louis XIV of France]] were immortalized in paintings by [[Alexandre-François Desportes]] and others, before Louis' plate and his silver furniture had to be sent to the mint to pay for the wars at the end of his reign.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}}

During the 18th century, more subtle demonstrations of wealth were preferred. The buffet was revived in England and France at the end of the century, when new ideals of privacy made a modicum of [[self-service]] at breakfast-time appealing, even among those who could have had a [[footman]] servant behind each chair. In ''The Cabinet Dictionary'' of 1803, [[Thomas Sheraton]] presented a [[neoclassicism|neoclassical]] design and observed, that "a buffet may, with some propriety, be restored to modern use, and prove ornamental to a modern breakfast-room, answering as the china cabinet/repository of a tea equipage."