CHIFFONIER, a piece of furniture differentiated from the sideboard by its smaller size and by the enclosure of the whole of the front by doors. Its name (which comes from the French for a rag-gatherer) suggests that it was originally intended as a recep tacle for odds and ends which had no place elsewhere, but it now usually serves the purpose of a sideboard. It is a remote and illegitimate descendant of the cabinet ; it has rarely been elegant and never beautiful. It was one of the many curious developments of the mixed taste, at once cumbrous and bizarre, which prevailed in furniture during the Empire period in England. The earliest chiffoniers date from that time ; they are usually of rosewood; their "furniture" (the technical name for knobs, handles and escutcheons) was most commonly of brass, and there was very often a raised shelf with a pierced brass gallery at the back. The doors were well panelled and often edged with brass-beading, while the feet were pads or claws, or, in the choicer examples, sphinxes in gilded bronze.
a Roman princely family of Sienese ex traction descended from the counts of Ardenghesca. The earliest authentic mention of them is in the 13th century, and they first became famous in the person of Agostino Chigi (d. 152o), a banker who built the palace and gardens afterwards known as the Farnesina, decorated by Raphael. Pope Julius II. made him prac tically his finance minister. Fabio Chigi, on being made pope (Alexander VII.) in 1655, conferred the Roman patriciate on his family, and created his nephew Agostino prince of Farnese and duke of Ariccia, and the emperor Leopold I. created the latter Reichs f urst (prince of the Holy Roman Empire) in In 1712 the family received the dignity of hereditary marshals of the Church and guardians of the conclaves, which gave them a very great importance on the death of every pope.
See A. von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, vol. iii. (1868) ; Almanach de Gotha; V. Frittelli, Albero genealogic della nobile famiglia Chigi (192 2) .