The kitchen sideboard/cabinet at Kate McSwain's Estate Sale is a fine example of handmade Doukhobor furniture. Although relatively rare in the Pacific Northwest, Doukhobor furniture is highly-prized in the Canadian prarie and many other parts of North America.

Here is some information to help you better understand the Doukhobors and their furniture

Folk furniture of Canada's Doukhobors

By Fleming, John & Michael Rowan

When the Doukhobors arrived in Western Canada in the late nineteenth century, the folk furniture they created reflected the traditional forms, construction methods and decorative motifs of Russia. Read more

The boxes the Doukhobors brought from Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, probably as dower chests and ready-made traveling trunks, were frequently embellished with painted geometric motifs, particularly pinwheels and circles. As symbols, circle related motifs have long been associated with mythologies of the sun and predate the religious icons of Christianity as they are usually understood. On Russian boxes, where they appeared often, these motifs are well-developed, opulent, and generally fill all of the space available. On Doukhobor boxes made in Canada, however, decorative elements were less insistently used, and were more restrained; they contained fewer colors; and generally consist of fewer motifs, both floral and geometric, which are disposed singly or in simple symmetrical and bilateral arrangements against a single color ground. This is the geometry of the pagan mythologies of the natural world and the vocabulary of the world of folk, rather than the symbolic language of Christian iconography that prevailed in Russia at that time. Read more

Doukhobor women breaking sod in Saskatchewan in the early
days of settlement when farm animals were not available