Two drawers extend across the lower part, and at each end of the desk two small, long drawers pull out. The desk was made about 1770.
Illustration [101] shows a mahogany block-front desk with cabinet top, owned by Charles R. Waters, Esq., of Salem, which was bought by Mr. Waters’s grandfather, about 1770. It is a fine example of the best style of secretary made during the eighteenth century. The doors are of panelled wood. The lid of the desk is blocked like the front, and like the lid of the desk in Illustration [109], requiring for the blocked lid and drawer fronts wood from two to three inches thick, as each front is carved from one thick plank.
Illustration [102] shows a block-front mahogany desk, owned by Francis H. Bigelow, Esq., of Cambridge. It formerly belonged to Dr. John Snelling Popkin, who was Professor of Greek at Harvard University from 1826 to 1833, and probably descended to him, as it was made about 1770. The legs, with claw-and-ball feet, are blocked like the drawers, as was usual in block-front pieces, another feature of which is the moulding upon the frame around the drawers.
Illus. 102.—Block-front Desk, about 1770.
In all the desks shown, the pillars at each side of the middle door in the interior pull out as drawers. These were supposed to be secret drawers. Often the little arched pieces above the pigeonholes are drawer fronts. The middle compartment is sometimes a drawer, or if it has a door, behind this door is a drawer which, when taken entirely out, proves to have a secret drawer opening from its back. Occasionally an opening to a secret compartment is found in the back of the desk. All these were designed at a time when banks and deposit companies did not abound, and the compartments were doubtless utilized to hold papers and securities of value. There are traditions of wills being discovered in these secret compartments, and novelists have found them of great convenience in the construction of plots.
Illus. 103.—Desk with Cabinet Top, about 1770.