The slant-top desk, also called secretary desk, or more properly, a bureau, is a piece of writing furniture with a lid that closes at an angle and opens up as a writing surface. It can be considered related, in form, to the desk on a frame, which was a form of portable desk in earlier eras.
The first pieces that not only resembled the bureau, but also carried the bureau name, were manufactured in France in the middle of the 17th century. Both the name (that comes from the Medieval French and hints at the type of the linen used as a pad for writing) and antecedents are much older. A medieval example is provided by a Swedish desk with a sloped surface made at the turn of the 13th century, although writing boxes, and not freestanding furniture, were typical prior to Renaissance, when cabinets with a drop-leaf board for writing started to appear in Italy and Spain (cf. Bargueño desk). [1]
The 17-th century France bureau Mazarin had inspired a bureau brisé, where the hinged decorative top can be lifted to reveal a space for writing. While French went on to creating a regular writing desk under a name "bureau plat", in England designs acquired the sloping flap that covered the interior and doubled as a writing surface when opened. By 1700 the English bureaus switched from supporting legs to set drawers all the way to the floor; one of the most popular versions was the bureau-cabinet with a tall cabinet above the desk. [1] The designs from England quickly spread throughout the Northern Europe and Italy, in the process getting elaborate outlines. [2]
In the United States, the slant-top desk is sometimes called a Governor Winthrop desk, in memory of John Winthrop, the 17th century governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As Winthrop died in 1647, he had no actual connection to this style of desk, which originated in the 18th century and is especially associated with Chippendale. The name "Winthrop" was attached to this kind of desk by the Winthrop Furniture Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, who offered their "Gov. Winthrop" desk in 1924, during the colonial revival period.
Like the Wooton desk, the fall-front desk and others with a hinged desktop (and unlike closable desks with an unmovable desktop like the rolltop desk or the cylinder desk), all documents and various items must be removed from the work surface of the slant-top desk before closing up.
The slant-top desk has been handcrafted in a variety of styles, one of them being the block front seashell desk of the 18th century which was popular among the well-to-do of Colonial America.
The slant-top desk has also been mass-produced in a great quantity of sub-forms and materials. For instance, some slant-top desks have very crude chains or levers to hold the desktop in an open working position, while others have elegant sliders ("lopers") which are manually or automatically extended to give support.
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 rolltop desk is a 19th-century reworking of the pedestal desk with, in addition, a series of stacked compartments, shelves, drawers and nooks in front of the user, much like the bureau à gradin or the Carlton House desk. In contrast to these, the compartments and the desktop surface of a rolltop desk can be covered by means of a tambour consisting of linked wooden slats that roll or slide through slots in the raised sides of the desk. In that, it is a descendant in function, and partly in form, of the cylinder desk of the 18th century. It is a relative of the tambour desk, whose slats retract horizontally rather than vertically. The rolltop desk was re-invented by Jacob Alles in Jasper, Indiana in 1879. "About 1760 Jean-François Oeben designed a new type of bureau: the original rolltop desk. The writing area can be covered by a shutter made of flexible slats, which is rolled round a cylinder hidden behind the top tier of drawers. In the Château de Versailles is found the most famous example of this type of desk, the "bureau du roi," which was begun by Oeben in 1760 and finished by Riesener. Riesener made several rolltop desks; the one for Thierrry de Ville d'Avray indicates that the Louis XV style was not yet regarded as outmoded in the 1780s".
A pedestal desk or a tanker desk is usually a large, flat, free-standing desk made of a simple rectangular working surface resting on two pedestals or small cabinets of stacked drawers of one or two sizes, with plinths around the bases. Often, there is also a central large drawer above the legs and knees of the user. Sometimes, especially in the 19th century and modern examples, a "modesty panel" is placed in front, between the pedestals, to hide the legs and knees of the user from anyone else sitting or standing in front. This variation is sometimes called a "panel desk". The smaller and older pedestal desks with such a panel are sometimes called kneehole desks, they were intended for small spaces like boudoirs and were usually placed against a wall. The kneehole desks are also known as bureau tables.
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.
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.
The fall-front desk can be considered the cousin of the secretary desk. Both have a main working surface or desktop that does double duty as a cover to seal up papers and other items located in small shelves or small drawers placed one on top of the other in front of the user. Thus, all working papers, documents and other items have to be stored before the desk is closed.
The Wooton desk is a variation of the fall front desk.
There are two kinds of trestle desk: as with trestle tables, some have trestles joined by one or more stretchers, and some have free-standing trestles. They can be dismantled, with the desk top removed from the trestles, for storage or transport.
A Bible box is a small container that is used to store a bible. About the size of a bible, this box could be used to transport in safety what was a very costly book. Many varieties had a slanted or angled top with a lower lip, meant to hold the Bible for reading when the box was placed on a table. In a sense it then served as a portable lectern. Over the years the typical Bible box was also used or specifically built to contain writing implements such as a quill, ink pot, blotting paper and writing paper. The level or slanted surface of the box then served as a desktop for writing as well as reading.
A tambour desk is a desk with desktop-based drawers and pigeonholes, in a way resembling bureau à gradin. The small drawers and nooks are covered, when required, by reeded or slatted shutters, tambours, which usually retract in the two sides, left and right. It is a flatter and "sideways" version of the rolltop desk.
A Davenport desk, is a small desk with an inclined lifting desktop attached with hinges to the back of the body. Lifting the desktop accesses a large compartment with storage space for paper and other writing implements, and smaller spaces in the forms of small drawers and pigeonholes. The Davenport has drawers on one of its sides, which are sometimes concealed by a panel. This stack of side drawers holds up the back of the desk and most of its weight.
A Carlton House desk is a specific antique desk form within the more general bureau à gradin form. This form of desk is supposed to have been designed in the 18th century for the Prince of Wales by George Hepplewhite. It is named after Carlton House, which was at the time the London residence of the Prince, and sometimes is also known as a Carlton House writing table.
A Cheveret desk is an antique desk of very small size which features a single drawer under the writing surface. In some occasions small drawers and pigeonholes are built on top, at the back, as in a smaller form of a bureau à gradin. It is also written with an "S", Sheveret.
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 looks like 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. It is also called a "Billet doux".
The desk on a frame is usually an antique form made up of two pieces of furniture. The first piece is a fairly large and closable portable desk with a slanted hinged top giving access to the writing surface and utility nooks and small drawers. The second piece is a stand made for it in the same style and material. It is also sometimes a single piece of furniture which looks as if it were made up of the two previous pieces but is in fact solid and nondetachable. This form was popular in Colonial America and was often done in the Queen Anne style.
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The Oxford English Dictionary has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest of drawers ; in the drawing room, a large kind of chiffonier." The drawing room is itself a term for a formal reception room, and a chiffonier is, in this sense, a small sideboard dating from the early 19th century.
A chest is a form of furniture typically of a rectangular structure with four walls and a removable or hinged lid, used for storage, usually of personal items. The interior space may be subdivided.
A desk is a piece of furniture intended for writing on, hence writing desk is redundant. It is usually found in an office or study.
The dressing table is a table specifically designed for performing one's toilette, intended for a bedroom or a boudoir.