Best type of breakfront?

zaq

Fri, Dec 14 2018, 11:54 am

Please, please . PLEASE do not even think of lighting candles in any sort of cabinet or shelving unit unless you are a pyromaniac bent on burning your house down. Candles must be lit in an open area with nothing above them except the ceiling, which is hopefully a high one. If you have a shelf above the candles, the heat of the candles can eventually make the shelf hot enough to burst into flame.

If you have a low bookcase, anywhere from three to four feet high, you can set your candles on top of it. If not, your best bet may be to mount a shelf on the wall, high enough to be out of the reach of existing or hoped-for future little people, and away from curtains or any other combustible materials.

BTW, if you're furniture shopping, "breakfronts" are glass-doored cabinets meant to display china, silver and decorative objects, not sefarim. (I won't go into the real cabinetmaker's meaning of the word, since it has come to mean "china cabinet" whether it has a "break" front or not.) Units for storing books are called bookcases, bookshelves, or sefarim schranks. Then there are "wall units", which are usually bought in sets of three, that may be any combination of shelves with or without doors and drawers for various storage and display purposes. They don't come with counters.