Holly & Martin Zhori mid-century bar cart

Buy the Zhori if you want a genuine mid-century three-tier cart and you are prepared to load it lightly: 25 lb per shelf is the figure that decides everything, and at 37 inches it is the tallest cart in this registry.

What makes it worth its own page is not the style, which is a matter of taste. It is the paperwork. SEI publishes the overall dimensions and then publishes the dimensions of all three shelves separately — "Overall: 33" W x 18" D x 37" H; Shelves: 31" W x 14.5" D x 1" H, 15" W x 14.5" D x 14" H, 31" W x 14.5" D x 9" H (top to bottom, bottom has support bar at center)". No other cart in this library does that, and the figures it gives away are the ones that decide whether a cart works.

The published figures

33 inches wide, 18 inches deep, 37 inches tall, 33 lb. Three tiers in poplar, MDF and birch veneer on an iron tube frame, finished in dark tobacco with aged brass. A guardrail. Two locking casters. 25 lb per shelf, published as a per-shelf figure rather than a whole-cart total.

Two of those numbers are unusual for this category. 37 inches is the tallest cart in this registry and it sits above the 32-to-36-inch band this site treats as the serving range, worked through on the height page. And 25 lb per shelf is low. Of the three-tier carts compared on the three-tier roundup, only the HOOBRO BF21TC01's 22 lb mesh shelf publishes a lower figure, and the BON AUGURE on the same page publishes six times as much.

The 18 inches of overall depth against 14.5 inches of shelf depth is worth pulling out too: three and a half inches of the footprint is frame rather than surface. That is normal on a cart with splayed mid-century legs, and it means the clearance arithmetic uses 18 and the tray arithmetic uses 14.5.

What 25 lb a shelf actually holds

This is the figure to plan against, and the conversion is the one this site uses everywhere: a full 750 ml bottle is roughly 3 lb, so 25 lb is about eight bottles. The full table of ratings against bottle counts is on weight capacity.

Eight bottles per shelf sounds generous until you notice the shelf is 31 inches wide. A 750 ml bottle is about 2.95 inches across, so 31 inches of width holds ten bottles in a row before anything else goes on the shelf — which means on the Zhori the rating binds before the space does. You will run out of permitted weight with two bottle-widths of shelf still empty.

That is the opposite of the usual problem on this site, where a generous rating sits on a shelf too small to use it. It has one practical consequence worth stating: do not treat the top shelf as the storage shelf. Put the bottles across the two lower tiers, where the weight is low and the cart is stable, and keep the 31-inch top for pouring on.

The shelf line, read closely

The published shelf dimensions are the most informative thing on the listing and they need a careful reading, because the third number in each triple is not obviously a shelf thickness.

The ambiguity, stated plainly. The 14 and the 9 can be read two ways: as the clear height above each shelf, or as the height of a compartment that shelf forms. This page takes the first reading, which is the one this site has used for the Zhori since it first appeared on the three-tier roundup, because 37 inches of overall height is consistent with a 14-inch bay above a 9-inch bay and is not consistent with three stacked compartments. The 15-inch middle figure is the one that does not reconcile under either reading, and I would check it against the photographs before buying if the middle shelf is where your bottles are going.

Either way, two conclusions hold. A 14-inch bay clears a standing 750 ml bottle, which is 11.8 inches tall — most three-tier carts do not, and the gap this site has measured across the category is 8.5 or 13 inches, on the shelf gap page. And a 9-inch bay does not: the bottom tier takes rocks glasses, coupes and short objects, not bottles standing up.

What fits where, shelf by shelf

The published figures make this unusually concrete, and the answer is different on each tier.

Top shelf (31 by 14.5 inches, open above). The working surface, and the one place a tall bottle, an ice bucket or a shaker goes without a clearance question. 14.5 inches of depth takes a standard 12 by 16 inch tray square-on with room behind it, which is the sizing on bar cart trays. The 1-inch lip is worth more than it sounds on a cart that gets pushed.

Middle bay (14 inches of clearance). Bottles, standing up. An 11.8-inch bottle leaves two inches of headroom, which is enough to lift one out rather than slide it. This is the tier to store on.

Bottom shelf (9 inches of clearance, center support). Glassware and low objects. Published glass heights run from 3.75 inches for a Libbey Restaurant Basics rocks glass to 6.69 for a Riedel Veritas coupe — all of them clear 9 inches, and the rocks glasses stack. The table is on bar cart glassware. The center support bar means a single wide object — a long tray, a crate — may not sit flat here, which is the one thing on this cart I would check against the use you have in mind.

37 inches, and who that is wrong for

The height is the honest objection to this cart and it deserves more than a line.

A cart at 37 inches is above kitchen counter height, which most listings put at 36. It is seven inches above a 30-inch dining table and about nine above a typical sofa arm. Beside a low mid-century sofa — the furniture this cart is styled to sit with — it reads tall, and the eye notices.

It is also a comfortable height to work at standing up, which is the other side of the same fact. If the cart lives against a wall and you make drinks at it standing, 37 inches is better than 32. If it lives beside seating as a side table you can reach from a chair, it is wrong, and the carts that suit that job are the 30-to-33-inch ones in the small-cart roundup.

One practical consequence of the height plus the 33 lb: this is a cart you load from the front, not over the top. At 37 inches the top shelf is at chest height for most people, and lifting a full bottle up and over a 1-inch lip at that height is how bottles get dropped.

Two locking casters, on a 33 lb cart

Two of four wheels lock, which is the category norm and is the one specification on this cart I would have liked to be better.

A cart braked on one side does not stay put — it pivots around the braked pair. On a light cart that is a nuisance; on a 33 lb cart at 37 inches tall it matters more, because the leverage of a hand on the top shelf of a tall object is greater. The carts in this registry that lock all four — the Christopher Knight Keria, the HMYHUM acrylics, the Eglaf — are the exception rather than the rule, and why four beats two is on wheels and casters.

The mitigation is placement rather than hardware: against a wall, with the braked wheels at the front, so that the pivot it can still make is into the wall rather than into the room.

The materials, and what each one means

Poplar, MDF, birch veneer, iron tube. That is four materials in one cart and the combination tells you where the money went.

Poplar and iron tube are the frame — a real hardwood and a metal structure, which is why the cart weighs 33 lb rather than the 13 to 20 lb that board-and-tube carts weigh.

MDF with a birch veneer is the shelf construction: a board core with a thin layer of real wood on the visible faces. It looks like wood because the surface is wood, and it behaves like board, which is the relevant fact. A veneered edge is the part that fails if it gets wet, which is why a cart built this way belongs nowhere damp — the argument in full, with the manufacturers' own care instructions as evidence, is on the bathroom page.

It also explains the 25 lb rating. A veneered MDF shelf spanning 31 inches is the limiting component in this cart, not the frame — and SEI publishing the honest low figure rather than a flattering whole-cart total is the reason this cart is easy to plan around.

Who should not buy it

Three buyers, specifically.

Anyone who wants the cart to hold a lot. 25 lb a shelf is about eight bottles, and 75 lb across the whole cart is less than half what the BON AUGURE, PETKABOO or Aubtik carts carry. If capacity is the point, carts with real storage is the right page.

Anyone buying a side table. 37 inches is too tall to reach from a chair, and a cart you have to stand up to use stops being used.

Anyone who wants a cart that definitely stays still. Two locks on a tall cart is the weakest part of the specification.

Who should: anyone who wants a mid-century cart that is actually built like one — hardwood and iron rather than board and tube — and who wants to know in advance exactly what will fit on each shelf. On that second point the Zhori is the best-documented cart on this site. Its competition in the style is on mid-century modern bar carts, and its place among the reproduction-versus-antique options is on vintage and retro carts.