House & Home: My Top 5 Etageres

Hello, friends. I hope you've had a nice week. We enjoyed ours. It was productive, creative, fun, and even relaxing. (Wish I could say that was the norm.) Tomorrow is a really big day for James. He writes a major important exam. Well, he's not going to be doing much writing. It's all oral where they move from station to station and get tested on various examination skills etc. We'll all be glad when it's over! (I love my Mr. Smarty-Pants.) Oh, and we're going out to celebrate that evening. We're going to try Weczeria in Saskatoon. Friends of ours have been raving about it, so we thought we'd give it a try. Anyone been there?

I have a top 5 for today. I've collected some favourite free-standing bookshelves. Most of them have turned out to be more like etageres. What is an etagere? According to Wikipedia,

An étagère is a piece of light furniture very similar to the English what-not, which was extensively made in France during the latter part of the 18th century. It consists of a series of stages or shelves for the reception of ornaments or other small articles. Like the what-not it was very often cornerwise in shape, and the best Louis XVI examples in exotic woods are exceedingly graceful and elegant.

I didn't know what the word meant either. In looking at the pieces I've chosen, I seem to gravitate towards the "lighter" bookshelves out there, and that seems to qualify them as etageres from what I can tell. (I'm not an expert though.)

Anyway, here are the top picks for this week.

#1 Brass (Vintage)