The Wooton desk

Desk

A desk is a furniture form and a class of table often used in a work or office setting for reading or writing on or using a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. Unlike a regular table, usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on . Not all...

is a variation of the Fall front desk

Fall front desk

The fall front desk can be considered the cousin of the Secretary desk. Both have a main working surface or desktop which does double duty as a cover to seal up papers and other items located in small shelves or small drawers placed one on top of the other in front of the user...

. It is the embodiment (in the field of desk design and construction) of the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption

Conspicuous consumption

Conspicuous consumption is spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status....

 which swept over moneyed society in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and was described by Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...

 in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions is a book, first published in 1899, by the Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen while he was a professor at the University of Chicago....

.

History

An Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

 entrepreneur (who was later to become a Protestant preacher) called William S. Wooton obtained patents for his design and established a company in 1870. Production continued until about 1884. The Wooton desk is their better known secretary desk; the Wooton desk company also produced a so-called rotary desk, which is in fact a pedestal desk

Pedestal desk

A pedestal desk is usually a large free-standing desk made of a simple rectangular working surface resting on two pedestals or small cabinets of stacked drawers of one or two sizes, with plinths around the bases. Often, there is also a central large drawer above the legs and knees of the user...

 whose pedestals have segments which turn on themselves to expose more drawers and nooks.

The Wooton desk was introduced at the end of the 19th century, at a time when office work was changing in a drastic fashion with an increase in paperwork that led to the introduction of filing cabinets, among other things. The white-collar worker

White-collar worker

The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...

 invaded the office

Office

An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...

 in huge numbers. The new reservoir based fountain pen

Fountain pen

A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action...

 and the typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

 were used to produce greater quantities of office documents than ever before. In this context desks which required users to fold and title each letter or document and place it in a pigeon hole, or small nook, were simply not efficient. It was faster to place an unfolded piece of paper in a folder and place the folder in a file cabinet or file drawer.

In a sense the Wooton desk was obsolete just as it was born and its biggest selling point was probably snob appeal in owning a complex desk with so many divisions and an abundance of ornaments.

Wooton desks in good condition are sometimes sold in auctions for the same price as a top of the line luxury automobile.

Design

Wooton desks were probably not the costliest desks in series production, but they were possibly the ones with the most drawers, nooks and crannies imaginable. Only a few examples of the cupboard desk had more divisions, but they were of a very utilitarian different style, and were often produced by the very families or communities which used them, such as the Shakers

Shakers

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends...

. The armoire desk

Armoire desk

An armoire desk is a writing-table built within a large cabinet, usually 1.5-2.0 m high. The cabinet is closed by two to four full-height doors, to keep out dust or to give a tidy appearance to a room by hiding the cluttered working surface of the desk...

is the closest modern relative to the Wooton desk in its size and form. But the armoire desk is even bigger and larger than the Wooton, and despite the use of rich veneers by some makers, it is a much more practical piece of furniture.

The Wooton secretary desk usually rests on a four legged quadruped support equipped with casters. The main body of the desk is filled with a dozen or several dozens (depending on the model) of small drawers and nooks for papers and small objects.

As in a "secretaire a abattant" or in a Fall front desk the main working surface or desktop is hinged and lifted completely from the horizontal to the vertical in order to lock up the desk, forcing the user to gather up and store all papers and implements beforehand. Unlike the secretaire a abattant however, the Wooton desktop hides only a few of the small drawers and nooks. The real lockup is done by closing two massive hinged panels which are themselves as deep as the desk and are like it filled with small drawers and nooks of all sizes.