It has decks on each side for oil lamps or lanterns.
I had one once. Lost it in a divorce. Made by Riverside Furniture. Oak and very heavy. Had lots of nooks and crannies, even some hidden compartments.
I’m pretty sure the PC killed the rolltop desk once and for all. By the late 1980s, they were still popular for people’s personal offices. But you couldn’t put a computer on one, and by the time laptops replaced towers in the office, we became such a paperless society, who needed one?
Again: they were for people who had so much paperwork that it was impractical to put it away.
BTTT
I bought one at Costco 20 years ago. Some of the cubby holes were omitted to allow a space for a computer screen and one side of drawers were taken out to make room for the CPU.
The article uses ‘chubby’ instead of cubby. Have never seen chubby as an alternative spelling..
me and him???
Illiterate
Have one now which I purchased new in the late 1970s, made by the National Mt. Airy furniture company in Mt. Airy, NC. Couldn’t use it as a computer desk during the years of big, heavy CRT monitors, but it has been my computer desk since I got my first flat panel monitor.
It’s a full size roll top, but has more slots than small drawers which I think is more practical these days. Like most furniture manufacturers in the US, National Mt. Airy is no longer there. It burned down sometime in the 1980s and was not rebuilt.
The closest we got to a rolltop desk was a rolltop breadbox.
It’s where they hid Earl Williams in His Gal Friday.
Been there, did that. Not gonna do it again. No usable space to speak of. No thanks.
I don’t think I’d want a roll-top, but I think it’s time for a proper desk. I started working from home and the road a couple years ago. My desk is a $38 folding table from Wal-Mart, no drawers so it’s covered with stuff
I am passing mine on to my son for Christmas.
There was an old rundown gas station on the outside of town I used to go to because the German guy who owned it, worked on my VW when it was having problems, which seem like all the time. Or rather he taught me how to work on my VW microbus engine. He let me use his tools and space to tear my engine apart and rebuild it. So I was there a lot.
One day, while waiting for a part for my VW to arrive, I was looking at all the junk he had stored in the back of the station. Piles of stuff. And in one pile I noticed parts to a roll-top desk.
I was in pieces stacked on the floor. They were almost black from old varnish. I asked him if he'd sell it to me and he said no. He just gave it to me to haul out of the back of his shop.
My first real antique piece of furniture.
It took me awhile to figure out all of the parts and put it back together. And when I was done, I refinished it. Removing the old varnish, sanding and staining the beautiful oak pieces. After few coats of lacquer, I had a beautiful piece of furniture.
That was over 50 years ago. I still have the desk but retiring and moving to a farm in Florida, my wife uses it now for her desk in the large country kitchen we have in the house. It's a beautiful piece still and is the centerpiece of the kitchen.
Luckily, when I met my wife and married her while on assignment there in New Mexico, she liked old furniture too. So over the decades we've been married, we have filled our home with old, antique oak furniture.
Some people have asked us why we don't upgrade and buy new furniture for our new house we had built when we retired here to the farm. Because we could never replace our old antiques with anything having half the beauty, strength and character of old oak furniture.
My first piece was the roll-top desk and I was hooked. Its character cannot be understated. No modern furniture could ever replace the sturdy oak antiques we have found hidden in old barns, on people's back porches and in piles in the back of old gas stations.
I would never even think about getting rid of my beautiful roll-top desk.
I know that model and know where the secret compartment is. Send me a check for $100 and I’ll tell you where it is. Then you can find all the Doubloons that some forgotten soul put there. ;o)
Mmm nope. The wife has one. Actually her second since I’ve known her. She loves for her papercrafting. Too much organization for me. I’d spend days putting everything in just the right place, then I’d never be able to find anything. They look cool, but not useful for me.
“I like something” = “Everybody else should like this.”
The logic of illogicals.
