Antique Writing Desks
A free-standing desk or writing table in wood, made for correspondence and paperwork at home or in an office, and in Britain largely a product of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Antique Writing Desks
The heading covers several distinct pieces of furniture. Twin-pedestal and kneehole desks dominate, with flat writing tables on legs behind them, then davenports, ladies' desks and bonheurs du jour, and a smaller run of cylinder and roll-top forms. Mahogany runs through more titles than every other timber combined, with walnut and oak next.
The desk you'll meet most often is a Victorian or Edwardian mahogany pedestal or kneehole desk. Pedestal appears in 385 titles, kneehole in 199 with a further 52 written as two words, and partners desks in 133. Leather is mentioned in 137, so an inset writing surface is frequent rather than standard.
Writing tables account for about one in six titles and are weighted towards the sold archive: two- and five-drawer forms, library tables and bureaux plats. Davenports, the small chest-form desk with a sloping lid over side drawers, hold a larger share of what's currently for sale than of the archive as a whole, and turn up in walnut, burr walnut, rosewood and burr elm.
Dating is often a bracket rather than a year. Just over a thousand of 2,281 listings carry a clean date, spanning 1700 to 1940, and the rest sit under labels: Victorian at 387, "19th Century" at 266, Edwardian at 225, then decades from the 1860s to the 1930s. Georgian and Regency material is present but thin, and 18th-century pieces cluster at the upper end.
Where The Range Splits
Timber does most of the sorting. Plain pine and pitch pine kneehole desks sit at the bottom of the sampled range, mahogany fills the middle, and burr walnut, satinwood, amboyna, kingwood, padauk and burr oak cluster at the top. Since mahogany is so common, the timber a listing names instead is often the most telling word in it.
Decoration and form then separate what's left. Inlaid appears in 247 titles and marquetry in 44, and painted satinwood, ormolu-mounted and marquetry pieces sit high. So do the more complicated forms: partners desks, Carlton House desks, architects' and metamorphic desks, pop-up davenports. A plain two-drawer writing table sits low by comparison.
Scale cuts both ways. Large appears in 81 titles and small in 70, and both compact ladies' desks and a 6ft partners desk sit well up the range, while mid-size plain desks sit below them. A named cabinetmaker in the title lifts a desk consistently clear of unattributed stock.
Antique Writing Desks Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for writing desks, 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.
The most expensive writing desk ever sold on Sellingantiques was a North European Art Nouveau demi-lune oak pedestal desk, in December 2022.
Edwards & Roberts·James Shoolbred·Maple & Co·Gillows·Holland & Sons
The Antique Writing Desks Glossary
- Pedestal desk
- A flat top carried on one or two drawer-filled pedestals. The term appears in 385 titles, making it the commonest single description in the category.
- Kneehole
- The recessed central space between the drawer banks that lets the sitter draw up to the desk. Written both as one word and as "knee hole", so both spellings turn up in titles.
- Partners desk
- Double-sided, with drawers or cupboards on both faces for two people working opposite one another. Used in 133 titles, and the form sits well up the range.
- Davenport
- A small chest-form desk with a sloping writing lid over side drawers. Named in 213 titles, often in walnut or burr walnut, with sliding-top, pop-up and freestanding variants.
- Bonheur du jour
- A light ladies' writing table with a raised superstructure of small drawers or shelves above the writing surface. It sits alongside Carlton House desks in the ladies' group.
- Kidney shaped
- A concave-fronted top following a kidney outline. A genuine sub-form rather than a flourish, with 77 titles using the word, in satinwood, burr walnut and flame mahogany.
Antique Writing Desks: Frequently Asked Questions
What wood are most writing desks made from?
Mahogany, by a distance. It's named in 941 of 2,281 titles, with walnut in 459 and oak in 247 behind it.
After those three the field thins fast. Amboyna, padauk, kingwood, tulipwood, partridgewood, burr elm, satin birch, sycamore and cherry each surface only once or twice across the whole archive.
Is a davenport the same as a writing desk?
It's one of the types the heading covers. A davenport is a small chest-form desk with a sloping writing lid set over drawers in the side, and 213 titles use the word.
Walnut and burr walnut are the timbers most associated with it, though rosewood, amboyna, burr elm and tulipwood all appear. The sliding-top and pop-up versions are the more involved forms.
How many writing desks appear on Sellingantiques each year?
Around 216 in a year, and 262 different dealers have handled one at some point.
That spread means the category is one almost every general furniture dealer touches, rather than the preserve of a few specialists.
Do all these desks have leather tops?
No. Leather is mentioned in 137 titles and "leather top" in 77, so an inset writing surface is a frequent feature of the pedestal and kneehole types rather than a given.
Writing tables, davenports and ladies' desks may or may not carry one. The listing title is where it gets stated.
Are French or other continental desks common?
British work dominates. French is mentioned in 105 titles, which makes it the main non-British presence.
Beyond that, the samples throw up single Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Anglo-Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Scandinavian pieces, and one described as French or Russian.
What is a Carlton House desk?
A writing table with a raised horseshoe of drawers running around the back and sides of the top.
It recurs in satinwood and inlaid mahogany, and sits towards the top of the range along with marquetry and painted pieces.