A Moore desk is not one but two large antique

desk A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table (furniture), table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading (activity), reading, writing, or using ...

forms. The "Moore Office Queen" is a massive desk, made for a sitting user. From the outside it looks, when closed, much like its competitor, the

Wooton desk The Wooton desk is a variation of the fall front desk. History Indianapolis, Indiana entrepreneur, William S. Wooton, obtained patents for his desk design in 1874. The desk was introduced at a time when the small business owner was seeing an incr ...

but it differs from it in several ways. For one, it has but a single large door to lock up the main work surface and the drawers and nooks around it, while the Wooton has two. More importantly (the manufacturer liked to boast about it) the main work surface slides in and out of the main body of the desk so that work can be stopped and the desk closed without having to put away everything, as is the case for the Wooton desk. The "Moore Office Queen" was patented in 1878 in Indiana in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

by the Moore Combination Desk Company. The Office Queen has a modern descendant called the

armoire desk An armoire desk is a writing-table built within a large cabinet, usually {{convert, 1.5, -, 2.0, m, ft, sigfig=1, abbr=off high. The cabinet is closed by two to four full-height doors, to keep out dust or to give a tidy appearance to a room by hid ...

. The "Moore Insurance Desk" is nearly twice as big as the "Office Queen" and combines a

standing desk A standing desk or stand-up desk is a desk conceived for writing, reading or drawing while standing up or while sitting on a high stool. History Several writers and statesmen wrote standing up: Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Winston Churc ...

and a normal "sitting" desk in a single piece of furniture. It was patented in 1882. Like the "Office Queen" it opens up by means of a single large door, and its internal work surface slides in and out. But it also has an external work surface to accommodate a standing user, on the other side of the desk. The standing user employs the "roof" of the desk of the sitting user as his (or her) work surface. Moore combination desks were produced in standard, extra, and superior grades. Standard grade combination desks were $110 to $185. Extra grade desks were 40% to 50% more expensive. Superior were more expensive.{{Cite web, url=http://www.officemuseum.com/desks.htm, title = Desks In her Smithsonian monography on the Wooton desk, Betty Lawson Walters notes the relative importance of the Moore desk as a competitor to the famous Wooton desk, and traces its origin and destiny.

References

* Walters, Betty Lawson, ''The King of Desks: Wooton's Patent Secretary'', Smithsonian Studies in History and technology #3, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969. Desks

See also

References