Antique Desk With Secret Drawers

If you would like to give your secretarial activities a yesteryear feel try an antique secretary desk.

Antique desk with secret drawers.

Featuring a front that drops down when in use before folding away at night these desks are ideal for saving space. The bureau mazarin is an early type of kneehole desk dating from the 1660s with two or three tiers of drawers on each side a small central drawer and a drawer in the kneehole space as well. Typically antique secretary desks from the 1800s have solid wood or much thicker veneers. It usually has eight but sometimes four turned legs resting on toupie feet connected with x stretchers or h stretchers.

Traditionally each leg contains four drawers and a thin drawer is installed in the bridge. Understand how the lock works and a world of secrets might be divulged if that is the prospectus is made to remove. In the beginning desks and secretaries were some of the most complicated pieces of furniture you could buy. The right end that is movable has been raised to show the drawers concealed in the false bottom.

Behind the prospectus of a fall front desk is a great secret area. Look for cedar mahogany and oak. A pennsylvania painted chest. There were no computers to store important information so these desks and secretaries came with all kinds of secret drawers tills roll down covers and other mechanisms.

Hutch and drawer secrets the classic roll top desk hutch houses dozens of drawers and compartments. Antique desks secretaries. Contrasting veneers and black inlays featuring items found in nature made desks both beautiful and functional. When i was a teenager i met a cantankerous old lumber guy.

For centuries antique furniture pieces have possessed drawers with false bottoms and secret panels that were used to hold money ancestral jewelry or legal documents. Another key indicator of authenticity is the drawer linings. As the light from your candle flickers your fingers press gently into the typewriter in front of you. Raising the tambour reveals anywhere from 12 to 30 small compartments and drawers built into the top section.

These compartments were often so well hidden that anyone who didn t have knowledge of them would never know they existed. Many antique desks built during the federal period lasting roughly from 1780 to 1820 contained hidden drawers designed to keep guns or other weapons close at hand. These date from the late 16th or 17th centuries. Secret drawers and hidden compartments are as much fun to create as they are to discover.

Most antique desks were made by hand and use fine dovetailed joints.