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.