Quest for the desk of my father (Part I)

[Note: This blog entry was originally posted in October 2006]
Quest for the desk of my father – Part I

This week I purchased a book by Mark Bridge called, “An Encyclopedia of Desks.” I already had another book devoted to desks by Garth Graves called, “Desks You Can Customize.” Several years ago I picked up Bill Hylton’s “Illustrated Cabinetmaking” mostly because of the section on desk designs. Whenever I pickup an American furniture book, I always head to the section on desks first. There is a reason for my obsession with desks.

When my grandmother died, my father inherited a piece of furniture he called “a secretary.” It was a big and old, a little rickety, and had lots of cubby holes filled with old family photographs and long unread letters. One of the more intriguing things to us kids was that the writing surface of the secretary was covered with a green felt pad that Dad had doodled on when he was a kid. The secretary sat in a position of prominence in our living room, a room we rarely used.

When our family gathered together after Dad passed away, we talked about the various things of his we would like to eventually have when Mom gave up housekeeping. First and foremost for me was that secretary. It wasn’t just because it reminded me of Dad; there was more to it than that. Even though I knew it wasn’t a great piece of furniture, there was something about it. It had nice proportions. I liked the angle of the writing surface. I liked the layout of the interior. It was functional and purposeful.




The next time I went home to visit Mom I did something I should have done years ago—I used the opportunity to make a measured drawing of the secretary and in the course of doing so, examined the desk in greater detail than I ever had before.

Stenciled on the bottom of the desk was “WH Ralph, Furniture Dealer, Fort Collins, Colorado.” My grandmother was from Fort Collins, so that would explain that connection. It must have been hers. The Fort Collins Courier has an online searchable database of back issues, and it didn’t take me long to find the WH Ralph furniture ads in the 1890s editions paper, then discover that the WH Ralph furniture company went away in 1900 when Mr. Ralph sold the business to a couple of fellows by the names of Godfrey and Beecher to satisfy some debts. That meant the secretary predated 1900. It was officially a 19th century piece.

But what of the construction? I’d always thought it was an ill-fitted, rickety piece. As I took down the dimensions, I noted that the frame and panels of the drop down lid were well made. So were the interior partitions. The large front drawer was coming apart in the back, but that was the only real weak spot. I began to develop a new appreciation for the piece.

I knew that the top part of the secretary came off so that it could be moved more easily, but I was surprised to find that each leg consisted of two parts: a lower, turned part and the upper rectangular part that made up the corners of the base drawer enclosure. They were made from different woods, one more closed-grained than the other. But this wasn’t the last surprise the “secretary” had in store for me.

The style of the thing was hard to place. I had thought of it as the quintessential American piece—A stylistic mutt. It wasn’t Arts & Crafts or Mission, or Shaker, or Colonial. (I still have not been able to find a match for it in any of my furniture books. I’m not sure that late Victorian, middle-class furniture is all that popular with collectors.) So, I wrote to a few museums to see if anyone could identify the desk from the pictures I provided and one responded. It turned out, Dad's desk isn’t a “secretary” at all; it is actually something called a “plantation desk.”