Antique Escritoire
Antique Escritoire
Signs of authenticity of antique escritoire
1. Backs of top and base same colour and patination.
2. Carcase wood dry and dusty to the touch.
3. Fine grain of carcase and veneer both vertical on sides, always running in same
direction.
4. Oak drawers with grain running front to back on drawer bottoms in more than one piece to allow for shrinkage of wood.
5. All veneer banding cross-cut with mitred edges never straight grained.
6. Wide variety of woods for inlays: cherry, laburnum, olive wood, harewood (dyed sycamore, greenish-grey in colour) and, from c.1685, boxwood, holly, burrwood, ebony and yew wood.
7. Figuring of veneer particularly oyster pattern should be asymmetrical.
8. On quartered veneer and parquetry, geometrically cut shapes should not be in identically figured veneer.
9. Veneer should be almost 1 in thick.
10. Heavy pin hinges to fall-front.
Likely restoration and repair
11. Doors removed from Continental chest and replaced with fall-front. Newly veneered edges to cabinet or plugged holes where hinges have been removed.
12. Marriage of original escritoire on stand and chest of drawers of roughly same period. Drawers in base will have no locks or escutcheons breaking design of drawer fronts, indicating recent addition.
13. Cornice directly above fall-front where cushion drawer has been damaged and removed.
14. Pine carcases, drawers usually indicating Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German chests of far later date.
15. Fall-front recut to make double doors.
After the Restoration (1660) desk furniture developed with the writing box on stand and the escritoire or scrutoire built on the same principle as the chest-on-stand so typical of the William and Mary period
(1689-1701). The large exterior surface of the fall-front provided a magnificent opportunity for the new art of veneering which had been introduced to England from the Netherlands.
The decorative stands proved too unstable to support these grand writing chests and by the end of the seventeenth century escritoires were mounted on chests of drawers. They were still made as two separate
pieces, with the join concealed with plinth moulding which matched that on the base.
The cornice mouldings surmounting the escritoire show the beginnings of an architectural influence on furniture design, and the interiors demonstrate the skill of early cabinet-makers.
Escritoires were made all over Europe and although they were superseded in England by the bureau and the secretaire, they continued to be made in Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal until the beginning of
the last century.
As with chests on stands and chests of drawers of the same period, escritoires were made with a carcase construction, with finely figured walnut veneer on soft imported oak. The backs of both component parts were of saw-cut oak planking fixed to the carcase with iron nails. The sides of the top and base were in well-matched veneer. The fall-front had cleated sides to prevent warping and bending. A cushion drawer was concealed in the moulding above the fall-front and below the cornice, occasionally with an escutcheon and lock.
Until c.1700, escritoires stood on plain bun feet, but after that date bracket feet formed an integral part of the base moulding. The base had a flight of three drawers, made of oak with cross-cut veneered surrounds and mitred corners.
Interiors were made with a wide variety of fittings usually numbers of tiered small drawers and friezes which often concealed secret compartments. A central door with a lock provided secure storage for documents.
Wide bands of cross-cut veneer framed the central panels of the fall-front and, on the interior, was a writing surface of velvet or baize cloth.
From c.1660 to 1685 parquetry veneer in richly figured walnut was typical, where geometrical patterns fitted together like a jigsaw. From c.1685 to 1715 oyster veneer and seaweed or scrolled marquetry replaced
earlier patterns and from c.1700 inset panels of lighter woods with leaves, flowers and birds in the central panels were also characteristic.
Brass chains or elbow hinges took the weight of the open fall-front. Up to c.1700 steel lock casings and brass escutcheons were used, but after that date lock casings were made of brass.
Dowry chests without stands were imported in considerable quantities from the Netherlands, crudely made and inlaid with pale woods in primitive designs such as doves, hearts and flowers. The stands for them were
made in England. Chests of small drawers with two doors instead of a fall-front were more
common in the average household where writing was not a daily or regular habit. Otherwise the writing box on stand or portable writing box with sloped front hardly comparable with the grand escritoire — served the
same purpose.
Reproductions
Nineteenth century
Cheaply made, imported Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese escritoires on made-up bases had coarse-grained pine carcases with pine drawers, sometimes stained to look like red pine. Italian versions
often favoured tortoiseshell in place of veneer, surrounded with ebonized string-of-beads mouldings.
A close relation to the escritoire is seen in the `secretaire de dame’ or `secretaire a abattant’, made mainly on the Continent but also in England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Escritoires on stands had a certain vogue during the early Victorian period when considerable numbers were imported from southern Germany and mounted on bun-footed, twist-turned stands made in England and
conforming to the old William and Mary pattern.
Price bands
William and Mary escritoire. Fine figured walnut veneer, $3,000-5,000.
Early eighteenth-century walnut with marquetry escritoire, $2,700-3,500.
Nineteenth century secretaire A abattant, $1,200-2,000.
Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch ninteenth century cabinet on stands
Walnut fall-front escritoire on bracket feet, c.1710.
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Tags: Antique, boxwood, cabinet, chest of drawers, desk furniture, drawer bottoms, drawer fronts, ebony, England, Escritoire, Holland, mary period, moulding, Oak, veneer, victorian period, walnut, william and mary