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The fire screen desk (also known as a screen writing table) was a very small antique desk meant to be placed in front of a fireplace to keep a user's feet warm while he or she was stationary while writing. This kind of desk was very popular in prosperous homes in Europe during the 18th century and slowly disappeared during the 19th, with the gradual introduction of stoves and central heating.
A true antique is an item perceived as having value because of its aesthetic or historical significance, and often defined as at least 100 years old, although the term is often used loosely to describe any object that is old. An antique is usually an item that is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human history. Vintage and collectible are used to describe items that are old, but do not meet the 100-year criteria.
A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading, writing, or using equipment such as a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers, compartments, or pigeonholes to store items such as office supplies and papers. Desks are usually made of wood or metal, although materials such as glass are sometimes seen.
A stove is an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to heat either the space in which the stove is situated, or items placed on the heated stove.
In order to keep the feet and the calves exposed to the heat from the fire, the fire screen desk usually had the form of a miniature writing table or a tiny bureau à gradin, with just a few drawers beneath the desktop. As its name indicates, it had a retractable fire screen in the back to protect the user's relatively exposed face from too much heat from the fireplace. The screen was usually made of a pleated or straight piece of heavy fabric, supported by crossed and sliding metallic supports. Many fire screen desks still exist, but the original screens have rarely survived. The metal supports or rods which extended the screens generally have been maintained with the desk. When the bare rods are in their extended position, they form an 'X shape' above the back of the desk.
A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk. Antique versions have the usual divisions for the inkwell, the blotter and the sand or powder tray in one of the drawers, and a surface covered with leather or some other material less hostile to the quill or the fountain pen than simple hard wood.
A bureau à gradin is an antique desk form resembling a writing table with, in addition, one or several tiers of small drawers and pigeonholes built on part of the desktop surface. Usually the drawers and pigeonholes directly face the user, but they can also surround three sides of the desk, as is the case for the Carlton house desk form. A small, portable version is a bonheur du jour.
A few fire screen desks had no screen per se but were simply lighter, narrower, and extremely thinner versions of the high secretary desk put on some form of permanent trestle mount. Their high form shielded the user's face from the heat of the flames while the open trestle mount at the bottom exposed the feet. They were basically a smaller version of a French form called Secretaire en portefeuille.
A secretary desk or escritoire is made of a base of wide drawers topped by a desk with a hinged desktop surface, which is in turn topped by a bookcase usually closed with a pair of doors, often made of glass. The whole is usually a single, tall and heavy piece of furniture.
The secretaire en portefeuille is an antique desk form which is usually mounted on rollers at the end of four jutting legs. The legs in turn support what appears as an oversize vertically mounted wooden pizza box. This is a cabinet a few inches thick, with barely enough space in it for the raised desktop surface and a few pens and sheets of paper disposed vertically.
The fire screen desk was often designed for use by a person of a specific gender: those designed for use by a female frequently had complex ornamentation and were generally smaller (light enough to be transported easily by a lady's maid) than those designed for use by a male. Because of these differences, individual desks were frequently called a gentleman's screen writing table or a lady's screen writing table.
