PROBABLY SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, 1800-1815

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, slant-lid desks were largely regarded as old-fashioned and desk-and-bookcases with secretary drawers, as in this example, were preferred by stylish consumers. In his The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide of 1788, George Hepplewhite describes the secretary drawer as "the face of the upper drawer falling down by means of a spring and quadrant, which produces the same usefulness as the flap of a desk." This feature, embellished here with a bold oval veneer set above a mitered rectangular field, slides forward to accommodate the user. The rest of the case is subtly ornamented with rope inlay on the drawer fronts and a diagonally-set inlay of alternating dark and light woods under the cornice.

A very closely related desk-and-bookcase is illustrated in Margaret Burke Clunie, Anne Farnam and Robert F. Trent, Furniture at the Essex Institute (Salem, 1980), p. 31, no. 25.