What wood are partners desks usually made from?

Mahogany, in more than half the titles on Sellingantiques. Oak is second and walnut third. After that comes a long tail of one-off timbers: rosewood, satinwood, satin birch, sycamore, ash, padouk, kingwood, thuya, birdseye maple, pollard and burr oak, pitch pine and plain pine.

Are both sides of the desk fitted with drawers?

Usually the desk is finished on both faces, which is the point of the form. Some carry working drawers front and back. Others have dummy drawer fronts on the reverse, matching the front visually without opening. Listings tend to say which.

How big do these desks get?

Stated sizes cluster around 5ft and 6ft by 4ft. The largest in the sample was 7ft by 52 inches. At the other end, 'small proportions' and 'mini' partners desks come up often enough to be a recognised sub-type, though 'large' is the far commoner word in titles.

Can a partners desk be taken apart?

Many are sold in three parts: the top lifts off and the two pedestals separate. It's a recurring phrase in descriptions. That construction is how a desk of this scale gets through a doorway or up a stair.

Do partners desks come with a maker's name?

Rarely. Only three names clear three dealers in the archive, so the overwhelming majority reach the market unattributed. Where a name does appear it comes from a stamp or a paper label, and some pieces are catalogued only as attributed.

Which periods do these desks come from?

The dated field runs 1700 to 1950, and fewer than half the listings carry a clean year. Victorian and a century-wide '19th Century' are the two biggest labels. Decades bunch from the 1850s to the 1900s, with the 1920s and Edwardian covering the early 20th century. Georgian and Regency pieces are a smaller group, and the 18th-century entries sampled were all mahogany.