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 {{unreferenced, date=January 2008 The portable desk had many forms and is an ancestor of the portable computer, the modern laptop an atavistic grandchild of the 19th-century lap desk. Medieval era and Renaissance All desks were portable to som ...

in earlier eras. In the United States, the slant-top desk is sometimes called a Governor Winthrop desk, in memory of

John Winthrop John Winthrop (January 12, 1587/88 – March 26, 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led ...

, the 17th century

governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

of the

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ...

. As Winthrop died in 1647, he had no actual connection to this style of

desk 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 oft ...

, 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 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 inc ...

, the fall-front desk and others with a hinged desktop (and unlike closable desks with an unmovable desktop like the

rolltop desk 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, ...

or the

cylinder desk The cylinder desk is a desk that resembles a Bureau Mazarin or a writing table equipped with small stacked shelves in front of the user's main work surface, and a revolving cylinder part that comes down to hide and lock up the working papers when ...

), 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 A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer usually created by an animal or organism that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washe ...

desk of the 18th century which was popular among the well-to-do of

Colonial America The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the ...

. The slant-top desk has also been

mass-produced Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batc ...

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.

References

*Aronson, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Furniture. 3rd ed. New York: Crown Publishers, 1966. *Boyce, Charles. Dictionary of Furniture. 2nd ed. New York: Roundtable Press Book, 2001. *Gloag, John. A Complete Dictionary of Furniture. Woodstock, N.Y. : Overlook Press, 1991. *Moser, Thomas. Measured Shop Drawings for American Furniture. New York: Sterling Publlishing Inc., 1985. *Romand, Didier. L'argus des meubles. Paris: Balland, 1976. Desks

See also

References