Antique Desk With Secret Drawers

Raising the tambour reveals anywhere from 12 to 30 small compartments and drawers built into the top section.

Antique desk with secret drawers.

Secret drawers and hidden compartments are as much fun to create as they are to discover. Understand how the lock works and a world of secrets might be divulged if that is the prospectus is made to remove. As the light from your candle flickers your fingers press gently into the typewriter in front of you. Hutch and drawer secrets the classic roll top desk hutch houses dozens of drawers and compartments.

When i was a teenager i met a cantankerous old lumber guy. In the beginning desks and secretaries were some of the most complicated pieces of furniture you could buy. These compartments were often so well hidden that anyone who didn t have knowledge of them would never know they existed. A pennsylvania painted chest.

Contrasting veneers and black inlays featuring items found in nature made desks both beautiful and functional. It usually has eight but sometimes four turned legs resting on toupie feet connected with x stretchers or h stretchers. These date from the late 16th or 17th centuries. If you would like to give your secretarial activities a yesteryear feel try an antique secretary desk.

Most antique desks were made by hand and use fine dovetailed joints. Typically antique secretary desks from the 1800s have solid wood or much thicker veneers. Secret compartments appealed to the italian temperament and they made many cabinets small and large with hidden drawers and the like. Another key indicator of authenticity is the drawer linings.

Featuring a front that drops down when in use before folding away at night these desks are ideal for saving space. This was to keep thieves or snoops at bay. Behind the prospectus of a fall front desk is a great secret area. The right end that is movable has been raised to show the drawers concealed in the false bottom.

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. 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. Look for cedar mahogany and oak. 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.

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.