A chest of drawers, also called (especially in North American English) a bureau, is a type of cabinet (a piece of furniture ) that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers usually stacked one above another.
In American English a dresser is a piece of furniture, usually waist high, that has drawers and normally room for a mirror. In British English a dresser or a Welsh dresser has shelves in the upper section for storing or displaying tableware.
Chests of drawers have traditionally been made and used for storing clothing, especially underwear, socks, and other items not normally hung in or otherwise stored in a closet. They are usually placed in a bedroom for this purpose, but can actually be used to store anything that will fit inside and can be placed anywhere in a house or another place. Various personal sundry items are also often stored in a chest of drawers. It has a long history as one of the stand-bys of a carpenter 's workshop. A typical chest is approximately rectangular in overall shape and often has short legs at the bottom corners for placement on the floor.
Chests of drawers often come in 5-, 6-, and 7-drawer varieties, with either a single or a double top drawer. The chest illustrated at right would be described as a '5 over 2 chest -on- chest ', the latter term deriving from the fact that at one time it would have been made as 2 separable pieces.
