CHAPTER V
DESKS
FROM 1644 to about 1670 desks appear in colonial inventories. During those years the word “desk” meant a box, which was often made with a sloping lid for convenience in writing, or to rest a book upon in reading. This box was also used to hold writing-materials and papers or books, and was sometimes called a Bible-box, from the fact that the Bible was kept in it. Illustration [92] shows two of these desks from the collection of Charles R. Waters, Esq., of Salem. The larger desk is twenty inches in length and thirteen and one-half in height, and formerly had a narrow shelf in the inside across the back. The front is carved with the initials A. W. and the date 1654. The smaller desk measures thirteen and one-half inches in length and eight in height.
Illus. 92.—Desk-boxes, 1654.
The desk with flat top in Illustration [93] is also in the Waters collection. It measures twenty-six inches in length by seventeen in width. It is made of oak, like the smaller desk in the preceding illustration.
Illus. 93.—Desk-box, 1650.