Vintage French 'Scratch Built' Cheese / Meat Safe - Garde Manger - Fromagier
This is a piece of proper rustic French kitchenalia.
We bought this from a really friendly elderly couple in a street market/brocante in a tiny village in South West France called St Julien.
It is a little wooden food safe (Garde Manger) that would have been historically used to store food like cheese or meat, protecting it from insects and rodents, whilst allowing good air circulation.
It is a very good yet quite simple design, made entirely from a fairly light weight wood, along with what appears to be ply for the top and bottom. It then has a fine 1.5 mm mesh sandwiched between the panels. The lock mechanism is a very typical French twist lock that works very smoothly.
Inside it has three wooden slatted shelves. The bottom one covers two bolts - we haven't been able to work out their purpose. The other two shelves fit snugly in place and are plenty robust. They can each easily be removed to create one large space should you want to protect something much bigger (perhaps a joint of meat).
EDIT - We have now realised that originally the Garde Manger would have been up the other way, and the bolts are probably from where a previous owner has removed a carrying handle. This makes sense as this surface has more marks on it, and even some ring marks where things have been left stood on it.
We are fairly sure that this would have been a homemade / scratch built item, however it has certainly been well constructed.
We can't imagine that today it would be used for its original purpose (as we all have fridges), but it would make a wonderful rustic decorative display piece for a kitchen or shop window display. The condition is actually extremely good, with just a few small areas of damage to the outside of the frame, and a bit of a crease in the mesh on the front door.
Dimensions:
Cabinet Height - 38.5 cm
Width - 35.5 cm
Depth - 23.5 cm
Top Compartment - (w) 33.5 cm, (d) 20 cm, (h) 10.5 cm
Middle Compartment - (w) 33.5 cm, (d) 20 cm, (h) 12.5 cm
Lower Compartment - (w) 33.5 cm, (d) 20 cm, (h) 10.5 cm
Overall internal space (with middle and top shelves removed) - (w) 33.5 cm, (d) 20 cm, (h) 35 cm
Weight - 2.610 kg
Can be collected from the Guildford area (GU2), or we will despatch using the Ebay Simple Delivery parcel courier service.