In the history of Western furniture, experts agree that the chest is the ancestor of storage furniture and that it gave birth to the buffet and the armoire, both equipped with doors (or shutters, panels, folding-doors) to give direct access to the interior.
This one, roomy, bulky, and profusely decorated, was probably intended to contain a rich trousseau. For all armoires did not serve the same purpose: one finds the cupboard for pots and pans, the cupboard for food storage, the cupboard for dishes, and the cupboard for linens, depending on the room in which they were used. Certainly, all armoires did not display the same excellence of craftsmanship, and the young married woman, it she had been endowed at the time of her wedding with a beautiful armoire, usually kept it for her bedroom as she did her chest. She kept in the armoire her bed linens and her personal belongings, while the Sunday clothes were kept in the chest.
Nothing mentioned specifically in the archives allows ins to state that the bride's cupboard, as it was known in France, was an integral part of Quebec marriage tradition, but some armoires seem to have been made with special care and with more elaborate decoration which suggests that they might have been part of a dowry.
