Lap Desk - Antique Lap Desk

Antique Lap Desk

As an antique the lap desk is a smaller variant of the writing slope. It is also called a writing box or a writing cabinet. In certain instances it is known as a portable desk, a term which is usually applied to larger forms. Most antique lap desks are really meant to be used on a table or some other stable surface. They are often strongly built of fine hardwoods like mahogany or walnut.

Antique lap desks had hinged writing surfaces, often covered in leather, felt, or other material, that flip up to reveal storage space for papers. Individual compartments were designed to hold inkwells, pens, sealing wax, and other contemporary writing materials. Some desks also had concealed storage compartments.

Read more about this topic:  Lap Desk

Famous quotes containing the words antique, lap and/or desk:

    “His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
    —William Gibson (b. 1948)

    “She look’d amiable!—Why could I not live and end my days thus? Just disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here—and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut brown maid?”
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    “There was a girl who was running the traffic desk, and there was a woman who was on the overnight for radio as a producer, and my desk assistant was a woman. So when the world came to an end, we took over.”
    —Marya McLaughlin, U.S. television newswoman. As quoted in Women in Television News, ch. 3, by Judith S. Gelfman (1976)