AN ENGLISH MAHOGANY PARTNER'S DESK

The design of the present desk is based heavily on the celebrated ‘library table’ supplied by Thomas Chippendale to Sir Rowland Winn for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire in 1767 (C. Gilbert, The Life and Works of Thomas Chippendale, 1978, vol. II, pp. 240-241, pl. 440-441). Chippendale’s model ‘completely finished in the most elegant taste’ cost Sir Rowland the then princely sum of 72p 10s. A photograph of the Nostell Priory desk was included in Oliver Brackett’s Thomas Chippendale: A Study of his Life, Work and Influence published in 1924 (plate XXXVI). This book, whose author was the Curator of Furniture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, no doubt contributed to the enthusiasm to reproduce this design.