FROM 1644 to about 1670 desks appear in colonial inventories. During those years the word “desk” meant a box, which was often made with a sloping lid for convenience in writing, or to rest a book upon in reading. This box was also used to hold writing-materials and papers or books, and was sometimes called a Bible-box, from the fact that the Bible was kept in it. Illustration 92 shows two of these desks from the collection of Charles R. Waters, Esq., of Salem. The larger desk is twenty inches in length and thirteen and one-half in height, and formerly had a narrow shelf in the inside across the back. The front is carved with the initials A. W. and the date 1654. The smaller desk measures thirteen and one-half inches in length and eight in height.

The desk with flat top in Illustration 93 is also in the Waters collection. It measures twenty-six inches in length by seventeen in width. It is made of oak, like the smaller desk in the preceding illustration.

The next style of desk made its appearance in the inventories of about 1660, under a name with French derivation: “scrutoir,” “scriptor,” “scrittore,” “scrutor,” “scriptoire,” down to the phonetically spelled “screwtor.” About 1720 the word “bureau,” also from the French, came into use in combination with the word “desk,” or “table.” It has continued to be employed up to the present time, for the slant-top desk is even now, in country towns, called a bureau-desk. As the word “desk” seems to have been more or less in use through these early years, while for the last hundred years it has been almost entirely employed, alone or in combination with other words, I have designated as desks all pieces of furniture made for use in writing.

A cabinet and writing desk used by perhaps all of the Dutch Patroons, of Albany, is shown in Illustration 94. It has stood in the same house, Cherry Hill, Albany, since 1768, when the house was built by Philip Van Rensselaer, the ancestor of the present owner, Mrs. Edward W. Rankin.

It was probably brought from Holland by Killian Van Rensselaer, and in it were kept the accounts of the manor. The desk is open in Illustration 95, showing the compartments for papers and books. The wood of this splendid piece is oak, beautifully panelled and carved, and the fine panel seen when the desk is closed forms, when lowered, the shelf for writing. Similar pieces appear in paintings by old Dutch masters.

Illustration 96 shows a desk owned by Miss Gage, of Worcester, of rather rude construction, and apparently not made by a skilled cabinet-maker. It has two long drawers with two short drawers above them. The space above these two short drawers is reached from an opening or well with a slide, directly in front of the small drawers of the interior, which may be seen in the illustration. The pillars at each side of the middle compartment pull out as drawers. The handles are new, and should be drop handles, or early stamped ones. The characteristics which determine the date of this desk are the single moulding around the drawers, the two short drawers, and the well opening with a slide. The bracket feet would indicate a few years’ later date than that of similar pieces with ball feet.

During the first half of the eighteenth century slant-top desks appeared with a bookcase or cabinet top. The lower or desk part was made usually with a moulding around the top, into which the upper part was set. The doors were of panelled wood or had looking-glasses set in them, but occasionally they were of glass.

The frontispiece shows an extraordinary piece of furniture owned by Samuel Verplanck, Esq., of Fishkill, New York. It has belonged in the family of Mr. Verplanck since 1753, when it was bought by an ancestor, Governor James de Lancey, at an auction sale of the effects of Sir Danvers Osborne, who was governor of the Province of New York for the space of five days, as he landed at Whitehall Slip, New York, from the good ship Arundel on Friday, and the following Wednesday he committed suicide. Sir Danvers had brought his household goods with him upon the Arundel, and among them was this secretary.

Lacquered furniture was fashionable during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and while the first lacquered pieces came through Holland, by 1712 “Japan work” was so popular, even in the American colonies, that an advertisement of Mr. Nehemiah Partridge appeared in a Boston paper of that year, that he would do “all sorts of Japan work.”

The wood of this secretary is oak, and the entire piece is covered with lacquer in brilliant red, blue, and gold. The upper part, or cabinet, has doors which are lacquered on the inside, with looking-glasses on the outside. A looking-glass is also set into the middle of the top. These glasses are all the original ones and are of heavy plate with the old bevel upon the edges. Above the compartments, and fitting into the two arches of the top are semi-circular-shaped flap doors, which open downward. Between these and the pigeonholes are two shallow drawers extending across the cabinet. The middle compartment has two doors with vases of flowers lacquered upon them, and there is a drawer above, while the spaces each side of the doors are occupied by drawers. The slides for candlesticks are gone, but the slits show where they were originally. The lower or desk part is divided by a moulding which runs around it above the three lower drawers, and the space between this and the writing-table is taken by two short drawers, but it has no well with a slide like the desk in Illustration 96. The arrangement of the small drawers and compartments is the same as in the desk in Illustration 96, and the lacquered pillars form the fronts of drawers which pull out, each side of the middle compartment, which has upon its door a jaunty little gentleman in European costume of the period. The moulding upon the frame around the drawers and the two short upper drawers would place the date of this piece early in the eighteenth century.

The first thought upon seeing the feet of the desk, is that they were originally brackets which were sawed off and the large ball feet added, but it must have been made originally as it now stands, for both the brackets and the balls under them are lacquered with the old “Japan work” like the rest of the secretary.

A style of desk of a somewhat later date is occasionally found, generally made of maple. Its form and proportions are similar to those of a low-boy with the Dutch bandy-leg and foot, and a desk top, the slanting lid of which lets down for use in writing. The top sets into a moulding around the edge of the lower part, in the same manner as the top part of a high-boy is set upon its base. Illustration 97 shows a desk of this style in the building of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, labelled as having belonged to William Penn, but which is of a later date than that would imply, as it was made from 1720 to 1730, while Penn left this country in 1701, never to return to it.

The mahogany desk shown in Illustration 98 belongs to Walter Hosmer, Esq., and is a most graceful and charming little piece, intended probably for a lady’s use. It measures twenty-four and a half inches in length and forty-one and a half inches in height. There are three square drawers in the lower part, and the upper part has two small square drawers for pens, with a third between them. The two pen drawers pull out and support the lid when lowered. The interior of the desk has eighteen small drawers, shaped and placed so that their fronts form a curve, and each little drawer at the top is carved with the rising sun, or fan, like the middle drawer in the lower part. The entire design of the interior is like that in a large block-front desk now owned by George S. Palmer, Esq., of Norwich, which was made by Benjamin Dunham in 1769, and it is possible that the two pieces were made by the same Connecticut cabinet-maker.

Another desk belonging to Mr. Hosmer is shown in Illustration 99. The bandy-legs end in a claw-and-ball of a flattened shape, and instead of the drawer, plain or with a carved sunburst, usually seen between the side drawers of the lower part, the wood of the frame is sawed in a simple design. The upper part has three drawers, and the lid when down rests upon two slides which pull out for the purpose. The interior is quite simple, having four drawers with eight small compartments above. This desk measures twenty-six inches in width and thirty-nine inches and a half in height.

The desk in Illustration 100 is now owned by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, and belonged formerly to Governor John Hancock. It measures four feet six inches from the floor, and is of the sturdy, honest build that one would expect in a desk used by the man whose signature to the Declaration of Independence stands out so fearless and determined.

The slanting lid has a moulding across the lower edge, probably to support a large book, or ledger, and as it is at the right height for a man to write standing, or sitting upon a very high stool, it may have been used as an office desk. Below the slanting lid are two doors behind which are shelves.

Two drawers extend across the lower part, and at each end of the desk two small, long drawers pull out. The desk was made about 1770.

Illustration 101 shows a mahogany block-front desk with cabinet top, owned by Charles R. Waters, Esq., of Salem, which was bought by Mr. Waters’s grandfather, about 1770. It is a fine example of the best style of secretary made during the eighteenth century. The doors are of panelled wood. The lid of the desk is blocked like the front, and like the lid of the desk in Illustration 109, requiring for the blocked lid and drawer fronts wood from two to three inches thick, as each front is carved from one thick plank.

Illustration 102 shows a block-front mahogany desk, owned by Francis H. Bigelow, Esq., of Cambridge. It formerly belonged to Dr. John Snelling Popkin, who was Professor of Greek at Harvard University from 1826 to 1833, and probably descended to him, as it was made about 1770. The legs, with claw-and-ball feet, are blocked like the drawers, as was usual in block-front pieces, another feature of which is the moulding upon the frame around the drawers.

In all the desks shown, the pillars at each side of the middle door in the interior pull out as drawers. These were supposed to be secret drawers. Often the little arched pieces above the pigeonholes are drawer fronts. The middle compartment is sometimes a drawer, or if it has a door, behind this door is a drawer which, when taken entirely out, proves to have a secret drawer opening from its back. Occasionally an opening to a secret compartment is found in the back of the desk. All these were designed at a time when banks and deposit companies did not abound, and the compartments were doubtless utilized to hold papers and securities of value. There are traditions of wills being discovered in these secret compartments, and novelists have found them of great convenience in the construction of plots.

The secretary in Illustration 103 is an extraordinarily fine piece. It is of mahogany, and tradition says that it was brought from Holland, but it is distinctly a Chippendale piece, from the fine carving upon the feet and above the doors, and from the reeded pilasters with exquisitely carved capitals. There are five of these pilasters,—three in front and one upon each side, at the back. The doors hold looking-glasses, the shape of which, straight at the bottom and in curves at the top, is that of the early looking-glasses. The two semicircular, concave spaces in the interior above the cabinet are lacquered in black and gold.

The middle compartment in the desk, between the pigeonholes, has a door, behind which is a large drawer. When this drawer is pulled entirely out, at its back may be seen small drawers, and upon taking out one of these and pressing a spring, secret compartments are disclosed.

Dr. Holmes, in “The Professor at the Breakfast Table,” has written of this secretary thus:—

“At the house of a friend where I once passed a night, was one of those stately, upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in prosperous families during the past century [i.e. the eighteenth]. It had held the clothes and the books and papers of generation after generation. The hands that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last had been folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got tall enough to open the desk,—to reach the upper shelves behind the folding doors,—grown bent after a while,—and followed those who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new generation.

“A boy of twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it, as when the artisan closed it, and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if that day finished.

“Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seemed to have suspected? What does it hold? A sin? I hope not.”

The “quick-witted boy, with busy eyes and fingers,” was the present owner of the secretary, the Rev. William R. Huntington, D.D., of Grace Church, New York, and since Dr. Holmes wrote of the secretary, new generations have grown up to reach the handles of the drawers and to ransack the old cabinet.

The middle ornament upon the top was gone many years ago, but Dr. Huntington remembers, as a boy with his brother, playing with the two end figures which, it is not astonishing to relate, have not been seen since those years. The figures were carved from wood, of men at work at their trade of cabinet-making, and the boys who were given the carved figures for toys played that the little workmen were the ones who made the secretary. The great handles upon the sides are large and heavy enough for the purpose for which they were intended, to lift the massive piece of furniture.

The block-front mahogany desk in Illustration 81 shows the blocked slanting lid. The brasses are original and are unusually large and fine. This desk belongs to Dwight Blaney, Esq., of Boston.

A splendid mahogany secretary owned by Albert S. Rines, Esq., of Portland, Maine, is shown in Illustration 105. The lower part is bombÉ or kettle-shaped, but the drawers, which swell with the shape in front, do not extend to the corners, like the kettle-shaped bureau in Illustration 30, but leave a vacant space in the interior, not taken up at the ends. Three beautiful, flat, reeded columns with Corinthian capitals are upon the doors, which still hold the old bevelled looking-glasses. The handles are original, but are not as large as one usually finds upon such a secretary. There are larger handles upon the sides, as was the custom. The cabinet in the upper part is very similar to the one in Illustration 103, but there is no lacquering upon the curved tops behind the doors. With the thoroughness of workmanship and dislike of sham which characterized the cabinet-makers of the eighteenth century, there are fine pieces of mahogany inside at the back of the looking-glasses. The cabinet in the desk proper, which is covered by the slanting lid when closed, is unusually good, with the curved drawers, set also in a curve.

This secretary is generous in secret compartments, of which there are six. The centre panel of the cabinet is the front of a drawer, locked by a concealed spring, and at the back of this drawer are two secret drawers; beneath it, by sliding a thin piece of mahogany, another drawer is disclosed; a fourth is at the top, behind a small drawer, and at each end of the curved drawers is a secret drawer. The secretary is over eight feet in height.

Illustration 106 shows a beautiful little piece of furniture, modelled after what Chippendale calls a writing-table or a bureau table, by the latter term meaning a bureau desk with a flat top. The same unusually fine shells are carved upon this as upon the double chest of drawers in Illustration 21, and upon the low chest of drawers in Illustration 31.

In the inside of one of the drawers of this writing-table is written in a quaint old hand a name which is illegible, and “Newport, R.I., 176-,” the final figure of the date not being sufficiently plain to determine it. Desks, secretaries, and chests of drawers have been found with block fronts and these fine shells. All were originally owned in Rhode Island or near there, and nearly all can be traced back to Newport, probably to the same cabinet-maker. This writing-table was bought in 1901 from the heirs of Miss Rebecca Shaw of Wickford, Rhode Island. Miss Shaw died in 1900 at over ninety years of age. The writing-table is now owned by Harry Harkness Flagler, Esq., of Millbrook, New York. It measures thirty-four inches in height and thirty-six and three-quarters inches in length. A door with a shell carved upon it opens into a recessed cupboard. A writing-table like this is in the Pendleton collection, also found in Rhode Island.

Illustration 107 shows a desk with cabinet top and serpentine or ox-bow front. It is made of English walnut of a fine golden hue which has never been stained or darkened. The doors are of panelled wood, with fluted columns at each side. It was owned in the Bannister family of Newburyport until 1870, when it was given to the Newburyport Library. It now stands in the old Prince mansion, occupied by the Library.

Illustration 108 shows a mahogany desk with serpentine front and claw-and-ball feet, owned by Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, of Brooklyn. The serpentine drawers of this piece and the one preceding are carved from a solid block, not quite so thick as is necessary for the block-front drawers. This desk was made at about the same time as the secretary in the last illustration.

The bill of lading in Illustration 109 is preserved in the house known as the “Warner House,” in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, built by Archibald Macphaedris, a member of the King’s Council. It was commenced in 1712, and occupied in 1716, but not finished until 1718. Mr. Macphaedris died in 1729, and his widow, upon her second marriage, gave the house to her daughter, married then to Colonel Jonathan Warner, and the house has remained ever since in the possession of their descendants.

The rooms are panelled, and are filled with the furniture bought by successive generations. Upon the walls hang Copley portraits of Colonel Warner and his wife and her haughty mother, Mrs. Macphaedris (who was a daughter of Lieutenant-Governor Wentworth), and of Colonel Warner’s young daughter Mary, in her straight little stays, which are still preserved, along with the garments, stiff with gold embroideries, which Colonel Warner and his wife wore upon state occasions. A number of the illustrations for this book were taken in the Warner house, which is one of the best-preserved old houses in the country, and which, with its furnishings and decorations, presents an unusually good picture of the home of the wealthy colonist.

The quaint wording of this bill of lading, and the list of furniture mentioned, make it interesting in this connection, but none of the pieces of that date remain in the house, which was evidently refurnished with great elegance, after 1760, when the old furniture was probably discarded as “old-fashioned.”

Illustration 110 shows a bookcase built into the Warner house. It is made of mahogany, and stands in every particular exactly as it was originally made. The bill of lading of 1716, shown in Illustration 85, mentions a bookcase, but this bookcase is of later date, and was probably bought by Colonel Warner for his daughter, as the books in the case are all bound alike in a golden brown leather, with gilt tooling, and each book has “Miss. Warner” stamped in gilt letters upon the cover. The books are the standard works of that time,—Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, “The Spectator,” Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and all the books which a wealthy man of those days would buy to furnish a library. The dates of the editions vary from 1750 to 1765, so the latter date may be given to this bookcase. It was once entirely filled with “Miss. Warner’s” books, but early in the nineteenth century, during a great fire in Portsmouth, the books were removed for safety, and all were not brought back.

At the top of the bookcase is a row of Chinese fretwork, which, together with the massive handles, would also place its date about 1765. The case is divided into three sections, the sides of the lower part being devoted to drawers. The lower middle section has four drawers, above which is a wide flap which lets down, disclosing a desk with drawers and pigeonholes.

A bookcase owned by J.J. Gilbert, Esq., of Baltimore, is shown in Illustration 111. It is made after Chippendale designs, and is richly carved. The base and feet are very elaborate, and the cornice and pediment, are wonderfully fine. The broken arch has delicate sprays of carved wood, projecting beyond the edge, and laid over the open fretwork, and the crowning ornament in the centre is a carved urn with a large spray of flowers. The ornaments and mouldings separating the sections of glass in the doors are as fine as the other rich carving upon this bookcase.

A wonderful Hepplewhite bookcase is shown in Illustration 112. It is owned by George W. Holmes, Esq., of Charleston, South Carolina, and carries with it an impression of the wealth and luxury in Charleston, before the Civil War and the other disasters that befell that city in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This bookcase is nearly nine feet in length, and is made of unusually fine mahogany. The lower part is designed in a series of curves which prevents the plain look that a straight front would give in such length. The doors form one curve and a part of the other two, which are completed by the drawers at each side; a skilful management of a long space. The curves at the top of the pediment follow the same lines, and the bookcase was evidently designed by a master hand. It was probably brought from England, together with a secretary to match it. Above the doors and drawers, shelves pull out, on which to rest books. A fine line of holly runs around each door and drawer, with a star inlaid at the corners of the doors, while a very beautiful design is inlaid in light and dark woods, in the space on the pediment, which is finished with the broken arch, of the high, slender type, with carved rosettes. The centre ornament, between the rosettes, is a basket of flowers carved in wood.

After the publication of the designs of Shearer, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, the heavy desks were superseded by those of lighter design, and the slant-top bureau desk was seldom made after 1790. Sheraton says: “Bureau in France is a small chest of drawers. It has generally been applied to common desks with drawers made under them. These pieces of furniture are nearly obsolete in London.” Slant-top desks do not appear in cabinet-makers’ books published after 1800, and it is safe to assign a date previous to the nineteenth century to any such desk.

Illustration 113 shows the latest type of a slant-top desk, made in 1790-1795. The frame is of maple, the drawers being of curly maple edged with ebony. The lid is of curly maple framed in bird’s-eye maple with ebony lines, and in the centre is a star made of mahogany and ebony. The small drawers inside are of bird’s-eye maple, three of the drawers having an ebony and mahogany star. The base is what Hepplewhite calls a French base, and the desk, which measures only thirty-six inches in length, is a good example of the artistic use of the different varieties of maple with their golden hues. This desk belongs to the writer.

Illustration 114 shows a Hepplewhite desk with cabinet top owned by the writer, and made about 1790. The drawers are veneered with satinwood, with a row of fine inlaying of holly and ebony around each drawer front. The base is after Hepplewhite’s design, and has a row of ebony and holly inlaying across it. The slightly slanting lid turns back and rests upon two pulls to form a writing-table. The pigeonholes and small drawers are behind the glass doors, which are made like two Gothic arches, with three little pillars, and panels of satinwood between the bases of the pillars. The pediment at the top of the cabinet is quite characteristic of the period.

Illustration 115 shows a charming little Sheraton desk owned by W. S. G. Kennedy, Esq., of Worcester. It is made of bird’s-eye maple with trimming of mahogany veneer, and a row of ebony and holly inlaying below the drawers. The upper part has one maple door in the centre, with a tambour door of mahogany at each side, behind which are pigeonholes and small drawers.

The lid shuts back upon itself, and, when open, rests upon the two pulls at each side of the upper drawer. The wood of this desk is beautifully marked, and the whole effect is very light and well adapted to a lady’s use.

The word “tambour” is thus defined by Sheraton: “Tambour tables among cabinet-makers are of two sorts; one for a lady or gentleman to write at, and another for the former to execute needlework by. The Writing Tambour Tables are almost out of use at present, being both insecure and liable to injury. They are called Tambour from the cylindrical forms of their tops, which are glued up in narrow strips of mahogany and laid upon canvas, which binds them together, and suffers them at the same time to yield to the motion that their ends make in the curved groove in which they run. Tambour tables are often introduced in small pieces where no strength or security is desired.”

In his will, George Washington left to Dr. Craik “my beaureau (or as cabinet-makers call it, tambour secretary).” Illustration 116 shows what might be called a tambour secretary. It is made of mahogany with lines of light wood inlaid. The lid of the lower part is folded back upon itself.

Above it are two tambour doors, behind which are drawers and pigeonholes and a door in the centre with an oval inlay of satinwood. Above these doors is a cabinet with glass doors. The pediment is like the one in Illustration 114. This secretary was made about 1800, and belongs to Francis H. Bigelow, Esq., of Cambridge.

Illustration 117 shows a small Sheraton writing table for a lady’s use, also owned by Mr. Bigelow. It is of simple construction, having one drawer, and when the desk is closed, the effect is that of a small table with a flat top.

Illustration 118 shows a desk which was copied from one of Sheraton’s designs, published in 1793, and described as “a lady’s cabinet and writing table.” The legs in Sheraton’s drawing are slender and straight, while these are twisted and carved, and the space, which in the design is left open for books, in this desk is closed with a tambour door.

The slide which shows above the compartment pulls out, with a mechanism described by Sheraton, and when fully out, it drops to form the cover for the compartments. The Empire brasses upon the top are original, but the handles to the drawers are not. They should be brass knobs. This beautiful little desk was made about 1810 for William T. Lane, Esq., of Boston, and is owned by his daughter, Mrs. Thomas H. Gage of Worcester.

Illustration 119 shows a bureau and desk, belonging to Mrs. J. H. Henry of Winchendon. The lid of the desk turns back like the lid of a piano. The carved pillars at the side are like the ones upon the bureau in Illustration 37, and upon other pieces of furniture of the same date, about 1820.

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