dressing-table

plural dressing-tables

1. datedDated form of dressing table.

   Going up to the dressing-table he passed his hand over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head turn just a little.

   1920, John Galsworthy, “Soames Entertains the Future”, in In Chancery (The Forsyte Saga; 2), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, part I, pages 87–88

   3 more examples

   On the one side was a stand of moss roses, on the other a dressing-table, and a glass à la Psyche, over whose surface the wax tapers flung a soft light, worthy of any complexion, even had it rivalled the caliph Vathek’s pages, whose skins “were fair as the enamel of Frangistan.”

   1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 52

   “Don’t tell me she caught you bending again?” “Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing-table. You and your singing,” I said, and I’m not sure I didn’t add the word “Forsooth!”

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

   Now that the days of handbag-carrying women have largely drawn to a close, houseworkers rarely have a clearly marked-out personal territory – although for some the dressing-table may be a non-transportable handbag equivalent.

   1989, Pauline Hunt, “Gender and the Construction of Home Life”, in Graham Allan, Graham Crow, editors, Home and Family: Creating the Domestic Sphere, Basingstoke, Hants; London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, →ISBN, page 71