Antique Walnut Bureau between £0 and £0
A walnut-veneered writing desk with a sloping hinged flap over a chest of drawers, made for letter-writing and keeping papers at home.
What Is A Walnut Bureau?
The fall-front bureau appeared in northern Europe in the later 17th century, as writing letters and keeping records became ordinary household business. Walnut was the fashionable cabinet wood before mahogany took over, and adding a glazed or panelled stage above the flap gave the bureau bookcase or bureau cabinet.
The form you're most likely to meet on Sellingantiques is a slope-front bureau on bracket or bun feet with no cabinet top, listed simply as a bureau or as a writing bureau or bureau desk. Burr walnut is the defining surface: 262 titles out of 915 say burr, against 64 saying figured, and the wood is described as veneer far more often than as solid.
Two poles account for much of the stock. One is the early 18th-century period piece, titled Queen Anne, George I or George II, with 227 titles calling themselves 18th century. The other is the revival of that same look made around 1900 to 1930, where a title reads "Queen Anne style" or "Georgian style" and the decade labels are well populated, 1920s at 102 and 1930s at 50.
Around the edges sit the branches: bureau bookcases and bureau cabinets, some of them double dome, at 159 titles; ladies' writing furniture under bonheur du jour and bureau de dame; and Continental pieces, with 46 French and 33 Dutch titles and single appearances from Venice, South Germany, Ireland and America. About 102 come to market in a year, listed by 183 different dealers.
Where The Range Splits
Date does most of the work. Titles saying 18th century, and the 36 saying 17th, cluster at the top of the sampled range, while the 1920s and 1930s "Queen Anne style" bureaux sit at the bottom. The two can share almost identical wording, so a period label in a title may mean the reign or only the style.
After that it's the upper stage. Two-part bureau bookcases and bureau cabinets are the largest and highest-priced things in the category, and the double-dome examples hold the very top, including an Italian pair sold together. A single-part slope front, whatever its date, works from a lower base.
Decoration and origin lift the rest. Marquetry, feather banding and herringbone inlay put Dutch floral pieces and featherbanded George I and George II bureaux high in the range, and named Continental origins tend to sit in the upper half. Small size is talked up constantly, on cheap revival pieces and expensive period ones alike, so it reads as a selling point rather than a price driver.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for walnut bureau between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Burr is the surface named most often in walnut bureau titles on Sellingantiques. Figured comes a distant second, and some titles use both.
The Antique Walnut Bureau between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Bureau
- A desk with a sloping fall-front flap enclosing a fitted interior, set over drawers.
- Bureau bookcase
- A bureau with a glazed or panelled cabinet stage above; 159 titles use the word bookcase.
- Burr walnut
- Veneer cut from a knotty burr growth, giving swirled figure. The commonest descriptor in the category, in 262 titles.
- Feather banding
- A narrow border of two veneer strips laid at opposing angles round drawers and flap, also called herringbone; 18 titles say herringbone.
- Bonheur du jour
- A small ladies' writing table with a raised superstructure of little drawers; 49 titles.
- Double dome
- An upper stage with two arched domed sections, found on the grandest bureau bookcases in the archive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a bureau and an escritoire?
Both cover a fall-front writing piece. Escritoire appears in 43 titles on Sellingantiques, often attached to William and Mary or Queen Anne pieces, and tends to describe an upright writing cabinet rather than a slope-front chest.
Secretaire turns up in 33 titles, with secretaire abattant used for the tall Continental form. Bureau alone, or with "writing" or "desk", is the most common wording by a wide margin.
Are most walnut bureaux solid walnut?
The evidence points the other way. Descriptions talk about burr or figured walnut veneer far more often than solid walnut, which is what the form was built for: a figured surface laid over a carcass.
Burr appears in 262 titles and figured in 64, and some titles use both words together.
How do I tell Queen Anne from Queen Anne style?
The wording in the title is the guide. "Queen Anne style", "Queen Anne revival" and "Georgian style" belong to the 1900 to 1930 pieces, and those decades are heavily represented, with 102 listings from the 1920s alone.
Where a title gives a plain reign name, or 18th century, or a clean year, it's claiming the period. The samples show both usages sitting side by side, so a 1920 bureau and an 18th-century one can carry the same words.
Which walnut bureaux are the largest?
The two-part pieces. A bureau bookcase or bureau cabinet adds a glazed or panelled stage above the flap, and those are the biggest and highest-priced items in the category.
Bookcase appears in 159 titles, cabinet in 37, and the double-dome examples sit at the very top of the range.
What unusual walnut bureaux have sold here?
The odd ones turn up once or twice each. A Spanish Vargueno desk on stand, a table-top escritoire with a revolving tabernacle, a burr "mulberry" bureau and an Art Deco "cloud" bureau are all in the archive.
So is an apprentice miniature of a William and Mary secretaire cabinet, and a lady's dressing case. Rarest origins appear singly: Irish, South German, Venetian, Biedermeier and American.
Do walnut bureaux come with recorded provenance?
Almost never. One sampled bureau bookcase carries an earl's name, and nothing else in the archive of 915 listings records a former owner.
What listings give instead is period, wood, form and origin.