DESKS davenports
The davenport desk has been associated with the Victorian period for so long that it seems strange to conjecture that its popularity was possibly in decline by the 1880s. The name comes from Gillow’s Cost Books of the 1790s ‘Captain Davenport, a desk’ written alongside the design. So the davenport was initially a Georgian [...]
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 [...]
17th Century French, Italian and Spanish Desks about 1630
Byzantine: Desks combining flat surfaces with sloped lecterns fairly commonplace.
Romanesque: The few literate people (mainly monks) used a writing-slope – often a portable box with hinged, slanted lid, but sometimes on a fixed base. A desk dating from about pieces of furniture designed specifically for writing have [...]
Antique French and Italian Desks (1715-1770)
Louis XV kingwood bureau plat with serpentine top.
In France, about 1715, the bureau-Mazarin with eight legs and banks of drawers is replaced, probably by Boulle, with the bureau plat (flat-topped writing-table) on four cabriole legs with only three drawers set in line in the frieze, the centre one slightly recessed. [...]
Antique English Furniture - Mahogany and Walnut Bureau
An Edwardian inlaid bureau with cylinder front, c.1905. Eighteenth century and Regency styles became popular at the end of the nineteenth century and this is a good example of Edwardian ‘Sheraton’. The square tapering legs with their thin stringing line end in casters. The inlay of the rosewood [...]
DESKS: BUREAUX ON STANDS
About 1670-1760
A development of the medieval slope-top box which in the late 17thC was increasingly mounted on a stand, either fixed or as a separate entity. Its hinged flap slopes when closed, forming a flat writing-surface with a knee space below when open. The interior is fitted with small drawers and pigeon-holes [...]