Broken Arched Bonnet Top Secretary

Description

The latin word for “writer”, secretarius gives us the title “secretary”, which in turn belongs to this beautiful, formal piece of writing furniture.  Into the 18th century, written material was more widely published and circulated, and desks grew to accommodate this need.  The key to the secretary is the built in storage up top: it combines a lower, slant top desk for writin space with two cabinet doors above that conceal shelving, drawers, or a mix of pigeonholes.  It married storage and organization with an architectural built in quality that not only looked lovely in a room, but could be closed up and clutter free.

This is a faithful recreation of a Philadelphia broken arched bonnet top secretary that would have been created in the mid 18th century.  Often because of the inaccessibility of the banks, the well to do would require secret compartments made in their finest pieces of furniture.  This would enable them to conceal their valuables, yet have them readily accessible.  This secretary has a total of nine secret compartments.  The two small drawers located just under the slant top are called lopers and are used to support the writing surface when it is in the lowered position.  These unique drawers were covered with a sliding sop and were often used to store paraffin products in such as candles.  The two small slides just under the two upper doors were called candle slides.  These are used to support two candles when the need arose to illuminate your writing surface.  The brass is all of the finest quality and sand cast just as the originals would have been from the mid 18th century.  The primary wood is highly figured walnut with pine as a secondary wood.  The sunbursts are inlaid with mahogany and maple.  Eighty four hand cut dovetail joints along with twelve sliding dovetail joints were used in the construction of this piece.  The quarter round fluted columns bracket feet and finials are all hand carved.  Burl wood was used on the prospect door.  Arched top tombstone doors were used in the upper case.