DESKS About 1620-1680
The Pilgrim period: Desks in the sense of specialized, substantial pieces of furniture are virtually unknown, but a portable writing-slope of the kind used since the Middle Ages is commonplace.
A shallow box about 24 inches wide, 20 inches deep and 12 inches high (60 cm by 51 cm by 30 cm), with sloping [...]
Antique Oak Furniture Bureau and Bureau Bookcase
An antique oak bureau of c.1740, with an unusual drawer there is a long drawer under the fall, thus ensuring that or be made, and subsequently the normal two short ones. The drawers have an ovolo lip moulding around the surfaces of the piece are in fairly straight grained [...]
Antique English Bureau.
A William and Mary period, c.1690, antique walnut bureau ia furniture of great quality. The tapering octagonal section solid walnut legs of this antique furniture terminate in bun feet and the flat, shaped stretcher is also veneered in walnut. The arched shaping of the frieze with its small edge moulding, like a cock [...]
DESKS: CYLINDER AND TAMBOUR
About 1780 onwards
Both terms are used to describe any desk with a superstructure enclosed by a half- or quarter-round sliding lid which disappears into the structure when lifted. A cylinder top has a continuous smooth surface; a tambour is slatted. This type of desk originated in France a little earlier.
Early examples (about [...]
English Bureau Bookcase
A Queen Anne walnut bureau bookcase of the slender ’single width’ type with simple bookcase above. There is a chamfered edge period glass mirror in the door. The bureau section exhibits all the characteristics of ordinary bureaux of the period - herring-bone inlays and cross banding, drawer edge mouldings and stepped interior. The [...]
ANTIQUE ENGLISH BUREAUX
Before antique bureaux in the Middle Ages many small portable oak desks were made consisting of a simple box with sloping hinged lid on which the owner could write and keep his papers inside. Towards the end of the 17th century this form of desk appears to have been also made on a [...]