Desks with drawers are useful elements for decor, such as in children’s bedrooms where they take refuge to study or work on the computer, as well as in offices or in rooms used as a study. They have a need to be practical and comfortable in order to carry out its intended use, while at the same time they should feature a design that fits nicely with the decor of the room where it’s placed. For this reason, the available models on the market are very numerous, from the cheapest to most expensive ones, and all built with different materials. Lovethesign offers up a wide range of desks with modern and attractive design, with or without drawers, each tailored to furnish in style. In the most modern and luminous rooms, desks by Mystudio work nicely, characterised by a simple and elegant design equipped with one or more drawers. These can be placed on one of the two sides of the table, on both or at the centre. In some models the drawer is coupled with a storage compartment, normally placed just below it. This type of desktop is very suitable for an office, because you can hold your work material inside the compartment, meaning you can leave the piece as neat as possible and make way for computers and documents. Many people work as freelancers from home: In this case it’s important to choose a desk that is integrated with the environment and that’s truly effective. This will keep everything within arm’s reach and, if necessary, you’ll be able to gather documents and material from the drawers while still being convenient and not too far. Elegance and functionality are the hallmarks of another line of desks with drawers, produced by Matiere Grise. In particular, the Zef desk, an essential piece that can be used either as a desk or as a piece of furniture in the hallway, living room or bedroom. It has a small yet practical central drawer, which can hold sheets, keys, or stationery, depending on necessity. Zef is made entirely of steel and is available in a wide range of colours. It can also be used as outdoor furniture, but in this case it is essential to dry any water that forms on top of it in order to avoid the formation of rust. For us it’s a piece of furniture that’s in virtually every home. It has a rich history, beginning nearly a thousand years ago and that, over centuries, has produced remarkable and precious specimens with many different features. Gradually, they have evolved to become what we now know to be the desk. In general, the term sdesk and writing desk are synonymous, and indicate all furniture or tables created specifically as a surface to lean on while writing and reading. Although writing developed thousands of years ago, desks came about in medieval monasteries, where, at least initially, they were nothing more than tilted tables where scribes hand copied codes, and sometimes the word actually referred to the entire room where they worked. Following the evolution of the shape and design of these early models is facilitated by visual arts help. From the fifteenth century on, as a matter of fact, in many paintings with religious figures, desks were usually depicted front and centre. From these images, and the furniture that over centuries has evolved into the very pieces in our homes, we get an idea of the evolution of the modern desk. It is only during the Renaissance that this piece of furniture spread outside of monasteries, making its way into the homes of humanists and scholars, as a work surface used for reading ancient manuscripts, writing letters and composing poems. The earliest examples of writing desks were provided an inclined surface so that turning pins would raise or lower the plane. When lowered, it allowed the user to lean over it as a way to study things more in-depth. The piece was also surrounded by small drawers and compartments that allowed for the placement of writing instruments. When it was raised, however, it would hide all these features from plain sight, taking on a more table-like appearance. Another example of a desk used in the Renaissance can be seen in a famous painting by Vittore Carpaccio, named “The Vision of St. Augustine.” In the painting, the holy saint is shown in a room, set on meditation and study. In the rest of the painting there are two pieces of furniture, or more specifically, desks. Both have a fixed structure, seemingly heavy and difficult to transport, especially because they’re connected to the seat. From what we can gather, this type of chair-desk combo was scrapped in the following centuries, until at least the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when it made a brief comeback. As we can imagine, through the first centuries of study and writing from home, desks and bureaus took on various appearances, but they were already viewed as decoration even back then (at least in our eyes today) and then created with a flair not only for practicality but also for design. Over the course of the next century there was a further development of this piece of furniture. At the court of the Sun King, in fact, an unusual type of desk came about: the so-called """"bureau.” It was later named Mazarin by the very Cardinal of the same name. It was made from a rectangular plane laid on an underlying body, in turn supported by eight legs, four by four joined together by criss-crossed beams. It was also equipped with a full system of drawers, divided into two protruding lateral parts as compared to the central part, which in itself was constituted by a further drawer and compartment, often concealed by one door. The Mazarin bureau featured smooth and regular surfaces made of fine wood, inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl decorations, a real example of workmanship perfection achieved by cabinet makers of the time. In the meantime, in Italy the """"Saint Phillip“ desk was coming about as a sixteenth-century piece of furniture that held the same structure until the eighteenth century. It was a table with lyre-shaped legs like the shape of a musical instrument, covered by a liftable part and equipped at the bottom with a row of compartments and drawers. The San Phillip spread throughout Italy, built with slight differences from one region to the next, and was characterised by its uniformity and simplicity with regards to lines and decorations. While previously desks were not yet so widespread, their presence increased in the eighteenth century, especially in France where the Regency style took over first, and the Louis XV style later. The Mazarin bureau, which had seen so much success during the previous century, was gradually replaced by simpler writing tables. It was the perfect furniture for studies with its streamlined structure: a long rectangular table, equipped with a shaped curved line top, with a slight indentation at the centre of the longer side. The counter top, usually covered in leather of different colours, came along with three drawers, two side and one central, while the body was supported by four curved legs. The writing table was essentially a desk for display, and in Italy it was called a """"diplomatica.” It was a highly prestigious piece of furniture for those who occupied important positions. That same period also brought about the appearance of the secretary desk. As the name suggests, these tall pieces of furniture with a counter for writing offered up some privacy for papers and objects stored within them. It was also the period when the first dedicated desks appeared exclusively for women. They looked minute and consisted of a table at the upper part with small built-in drawers and compartments. They were used both for writing and for storing things. At the same time in England kneehole desks first came about, with a name that doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It was a refined and precious piece of furniture, usually performed by cabinetmakers with important aristocratic representatives as clients. In their most classic rendition, they flaunted a rectangular shape with four or six legs, two sets of side drawers, and topped off with a long drawer of the same size as the counter itself. They had a very simple appearance, little to no decoration and a linear line. With the success of Napoleon in France, the leader brought on the rise of the so-called Empire style, a branch of Neoclassicism that influenced not only furniture but also architecture, as well as decorative and visual arts. As a consequence, even the style of construction of desks were influenced. While the overall structure did not undergo major changes and was still essentially a table with drawers, the typical floral inlay decorations disappeared in favour of Greek, Roman and Egyptian motifs. In this period writing tables were known for their lack of shape and, at the same time, for their austere appearance. In the same period in England that the Regency style took over, the first samples of study furniture that most resemble modern desks, such as pedestal desks, also appeared. They were essentially writing desks with simple lines, equipped with a central space for legs and two side rows of drawers. They were also often equipped with a large central drawer underneath the top surface. Worth mentioning are certainly mechanical desks designed and built by Florentine Giovanni Socci, who belonged to a dynasty of cabinetmakers whose workshop space endured more than 150 years in Florence, starting in 1728. Giovanni came up with one of the most beautiful pieces of furniture built in the nineteenth century. A desk with an elliptical shape that, from afar it seems like a tambourine on six legs and resting on a footrest. The top surface consists of two plates of very rare marble, supplied by the Royal Gallery of Workers for Socci himself. Once the chair is removed from the desk part by pulling two large handles out effortlessly, the two halves of the tabletop open and another top comes out from under it, upholstered in leather with a lectern, as well as a small cabinet with a drawer. It has a military touch and it’s almost as if it were designed to be placed on a battlefield. According to those who have used it, the piece has an extremely uncomfortable design. For this reason it is considered more of a show piece and not a real and practical piece. Despite this, the piece obtained great success, so much so that at least four other versions were made. The prototype can be seen in the French palace of Fontainebleau, while variants include: two at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, one in the United States and one in Milan, in Villa Necchi Campiglio. The twentieth century opened with Liberty-style pieces, continuing into the twenties and thirties with Deco style. Furniture coming from this period is characterised by sharp and clean volumes, defined by straight lines and geometrical trends. Desks and secretary desks made a splash in the design world. Veneers, requiring the utmost attention to detail, contributed to the pieces’ elegance, while t They assert themselves desks and secretaires line advocated by the subsidiary. Veneers, very accurate, contributed to their elegance, while the piece was rounded out by ebony, walnut and rosewood. The writing tops were covered with Moroccan or shagreen leather, which is dogfish skin. Furthermore, they were also often lacquered and shiny, what with its shellac application. Of particular interest was the presentation of, at the beginning of the century, the so-called """"work room"""", designed by architect Ernesto Basile. Made of oakwood, this piece of furniture for the study consists of a unitary set of desktops, matching up both structurally and aesthetically to the shelves and file cabinets stashed away around the area. This furnishing solution was then produced on an industrial scale. One of most famous desks in the world, immortalised in countless photographs, films, and television news reports, is the Resolute Desk, which makes calls the White House Oval Office home. It is a nineteenth-century furnishing built by Queen Victoria in 1880 and donated to President Rutherford B. Hayes. Contrary to popular belief, the Resolute was not placed immediately in this famous location, but was moved from room to room until Jackie Kennedy set up the current arrangement. The desk design drawings are kept in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, since the Resolute was named after the very ship whose wood was used to build it after finishing its exploration of the Arctic Ocean. Since its construction, the desk has been amended twice: first by the will of President Roosevelt, who asked to add a front panel that hid his legs when he was sitting. The second was when a lower base was added to raise the desk. More than one desk profited from the wood taken from the Resolute; four to be exact. One is now in the New Bedford Whaling Museum, while the other two stayed alongside Queen Victoria. One is conserved in the Naval Museum in Portsmouth, while the other on the private yacht HMY Victoria and Albert II. Nowadays, the desk’s lines have become less defined as compared to the past, and some models are extremely minimal, with only a supporting surface, which is sometimes glass, and legs. However, depending on how the legs are built, it’s possible to divide the various existing models in many major categories, and here are the most common: - Desks with drawers: perfect for those who need a workspace to collect documents and thoughts. - Computer Desks: These are basically tables with computers on top. They are usually equipped with a small bottom shelf where you place your keyboard and mouse. If it’s big enough it can also keep writing materials or even scanners and printers. - Corner Desks: ideal for those with limited space. However, contrary to what one might think, they’re large enough to hold a computer as well as other materials. - Drop-leaf tables: These are perfect for anyone who has limited space. As a matter of fact, the drop-leaf table offers a comfortable surface that can be closed up when finished. Although there are no drawers, they are still an excellent solution for those in need of space. - Combination Desks: These are the most complete solution. They combine all the positive features of the previous models: They are spacious and you can add drawers and storage space. As for dimensions, these desks can be adaptable to both larger and smaller environments. - Drawing Desks: for students or for anyone with a passion for drawing. They have an adjustable plane, so you can change the height. They are also equipped with a lower shelf where you can place material