Thread: Roll Top Desk

Nice find
Had a quick look on Google images and the double (triple?) curve on the roll top and many pigeon holes seems to date it around the 1890s to 1910s. Lots of reversing grain in the timber, possibly mahogany but don't quote me on that.

When I worked in Parramatta there were a couple of shops there that sold furniture very similar. A mix of older styles, solid timber, and especially the 'dovetails' which were identical to what you have there. Its like they knew they should be doing dovetails to be in period, but just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible so they just did one big one. The drawers had solid timber bases too, roughly tapered at the edges.

They were amazingly cheap for solid wood timber. All newly made and from Asia somewhere - probably Indonesia or Vietnam but I dont remeber which country exactly.

Looked good from a distance but generally pretty mediocre work up close.
Cheers
Arron

Thanks Elan but it doesn't come across as being quite, that old I wish it was. The bottoms of drawers are too clean and I would have thought there would be some ink stains, Ball point pens came out in the 50's so I was thinking some time after that.
Arron I hadn't even considered the fact that it could have been made in an Asian country. The dovetails are are crude but they do the job. The desk was definitely not made by a craftsman, but possibly by a tradesman. The amount of work that would have gone into making it though is what has had me in, but of course if the labour is really cheap it doesn't matter if a lot of hours have been put into making it, but the use of slotted wood screws instead of phillips head strikes me as a bit unusual. Would an Asian manufacture go to that detail just to make it look older than it is? as you can only see these screws when you have dismantled the desk.
Regards.
Richard.

Doesn't look like Rimu to me. My guess is an asian knock off.

I dont think the slotted wood screws represent a conscious attempt to imitate traditional materials, just what comes easily and cheaply to hand in a dirt-poor Indonesian villiage.

Oh well so much for all my theories, I guess I didn't get the buy of the year but I do have a reasonably useful piece of furniture, that doesn't hurt the eyes and with all its drawers had helped to tidy up my study. The person / persons who made it though are definitely being exploited, I would expect that the maker did not got much after you deduct material, freight, probably a middle man, and the retailers mark up, not a lot left out of $1000.00 end price. Would be good to know what the wood is though.
Richard.

I didn't even think of Indonesian knock offs, but, now that you mention it, I agree.
Still think it's mahogany of some sort, there is plantation stuff in the region.

Mahogany. Indonesian. Slotted screws due to no power supply.

Some great grain figure in there!

If the desk isn't warped, spilt, coming apart then you've done well.

And at $300 it's a steal IF it is fully functional. There's more than $300 in mahogany in it.

From memory, our neighbors paid 470 for the POS melamine thing they have. Yours is brilliant compared to that thing.

Oh and if you want to know the value of mahogany just call Australian furniture timbers and ask.

Labour rates for makers in Indonesia ten years ago were poor. Equivalent (local buying power - nothing else is relevant) to around 600 per month - six day week with zero benefits of any kind other than keeping your job until you made a mistake.

Carvers who clearly had great skills, were paid a little more but denied the time to do any fine work.

All that said: there are firms who produce work equal in standard to the best in the world. I am unaware of any owned by Indonesians though. Americans and Aussies seemed to be the overlords. In Vietnam, more firms are owned by Europeans but there are more locally owned high end firms too.

Does the tambour slide ok? Btw if you feel the grain has far too much colour variation, you can even it out with a bit of artistic use of stain in the lighter areas. And if you feel you'd like to make the interior more interesting, I have seen one of these with a highly detailed, painted interior. Everything was painted black with cream pinstripe details (professionally done) and nickel knobs. It looked beautiful.

If you are in sydney then you could have a look in Parramatta and see if the shops are still there and still selling them. One was in Sorrel st near Palmer St, and the other was either United Lane or Horwood Place (where Horwood runs alongside United Lane).
I seem to recall the price of $6-700 for the desks - remember it because I spent some time pondering the economics of it too.
I wonder how many get passed off as genuine antiques?
Arron

Aaron: to any person into antiques, it'd be a wasted exercise trying to convince them these are old BUT to anyone else, the sellers will often tell you anything.

The giveaway is that these places either have multiples of the same thing or other pieces obviously made from the same timber.

Oops. Arron. Apologies for getting your name wrong.