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 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 [...]

Queen Anne secretaire
The increasing skill of the cabinet-maker and the change in style to loftier and more spacious houses brought new variations to antique writing furniture.
Signs of authenticity of Queen Anne secretaire
1. Plinth moulding with matching moulding on joins of component parts.
2. Side veneers matching on component parts.
3. If with serpentine apron incorporating bracket feet, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A Chippendale mahogany kneehole desk of exceptional quality, c. 1760. The front is of serpentine shape and the choice of veneers is extremely fine, showing pronounced figure.
The mouldings show considerable refinement. A cock bead is to be seen around the drawer edges and the shaping of the bracket feet is one typically attributed to 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 [...]

Antique English Georgian Walnut and Mahogany Pedestal Desks.
Original pedestal desks - George III mahogany desk - George III provincial kneehole pedestal desk - Victorian oak desk with mahogany veneer - 18th Century walnut desk
The pedestal desk was not made until c.1765 when it can be seen in its grandest form  very large and ornate, and [...]