The desk on a frame (or desk on frame) is usually an antique form made up of two pieces of furniture. The first piece is a fairly large and closable portable desk with a slanted hinged top giving access to the writing surface and utility nooks and small drawers. The second piece is a stand made for it in the same style and material. It is also sometimes a single piece of furniture which looks as if it were made up of the two previous pieces but is in fact solid and undetachable. This form was popular in Colonial America and was often done in the Queen Anne style.
The slant top desk is a direct morphological descendant. In a sense the Spanish Bargueno (or Vargueno) desk is a distant cousin of the two piece version, since the Bargueno is also made up of a portable desk and a stand constructed specially for it, using the same materials and style.
See also the list of desk forms and types.
Famous quotes containing the words desk and/or frame:
“We must rest here, for this is where the teacher comes.
On his desk stands a vase of tears.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)