Antique Tables: English and French Oak, Mahogany and Walnut Antique Sofa, Gateleg, Writing Tables and Desks
AN OAK “CREDENCE” OR FOLDING TABLE with semi-circular hinged top, the
moulded frieze with a drawer and broad canted corners, the frame raised on four baluster legs joined by a platform stretcher, and with a baluster-shaped gateleg back support, 2ft 7in. [...]

DESKS  roll-top
A rather fine oak roll-top desk in which something of Eastlake’s preaching on Gothic reformed furniture has taken effect. Note the panelled sides, the incised line decoration on the drawers and the carved trefoil motif on the slope frame. Undoubtedly intended for use by some professional of ‘reformed’ leanings. c. 1875
An oak roll-top [...]

DESKS  Victorian, Edwardian Pedestal
A handsome burr walnut pedestal desk with superstructure including a sloping writing surface, drawers and a turned baluster gallery. A type of desk once rather despised for its superstructure, which was often
removed to convert the piece into a flat-topped pedestal desk of more Georgian appearance. Now, however, the form is coming into [...]

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 1810-1840
Classical period (known at the time as ‘Grecian’): Immigrant craftsmen - notably Lannuier in New York, Bouvier and Quervelle in Philadelphia -introduce French Empire style.
Mahogany secretaire-a-abattant, about 1815.
Desks embody features of the grand Napoleonic manner. Some are flat, leather-topped library tables, others are a new version of the secretary desk with a vertical [...]

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 DESKS About 1770-1800
Louis XVI secretaire-a-abattant in satinwood with marquetry decoration.
Neo-classical, first phase: ‘Louis XVI’ style already established in France by 1771, four years before death of Louis XV. Sinuous shapes replaced by rectilinear carcase for secretaire, straight tapered legs (square or round section) on bureau plat and cylinder-topped desk. Many pieces still highly [...]

Art Nouveau and Art Deco DESKS About 1890-1940
Belgian art nouveau desk by Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, about 1910.
Art nouveau, 1890-1920: About 1898 van de Velde designs desk with kidney-shaped top mounted on pedestals with drawers and bookshelf extensions. Majorelle’s 1905 writing-tables with dished tops on heavy, semicabriole legs reinterpret rococo. Many commercially manufactured bureau-cabinets are asymmetrical, with [...]

DESKS: BONHEURS DU OURS AN CHEVERETS
About 1770-1915
Lion’s mask handles on 19thC pedestal desk.
A satinwood bonheur du jour with simple inlaid decoration.
Handles: Generally very simple brass swan-neck in 18thC, turned wooden knobs in 19th, joined by a variety of metal ring, bail or drop handles around 1870, and horizontal wooden pulls around 1900.
Generally skeleton escutcheons; sometimes [...]