Friday, October 26, 2007

Fantasy Desk


I've just finished installing a shiny white desk, faded red kilim and knock-off Jielde desk lamp in my milk-colored study. The desk is a simple white parson's table, 5 feet long. I bought it unfinished and disassembled, painted it and nearly destroyed my shoulders and knuckles putting it together (you try screwing sixteen three-inch screws into two thick pieces of solid birch).

But sometimes I like to dream. And on Friday afternoons, after I have packed up my laptop, the three or four books I'll need over the weekend, and filled my bag with file folders crammed with student papers and various articles and drafts of things-in-progress, shut off the light and driven home, I like to pour myself a cup of tea and lick the ebay window. I don't really know what else to call it- "browsing" is too noncommittal. So I've chosen to anglicize the French idiom for window shopping- leche vitrine, or "window licking."

During a recent mid-century modern furniture foray, I came upon this graceful, utterly useful 6 foot desk. It is smooth and polished and slopes, like a piano. It has storage and lots of table space and it is Very Long. It is a desk to dream about. It is also $7500. Sometimes Ebay is like a decorative arts museum.

Edward Wormley Desk on Ebay

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful - tho' I must say at first glance I thought it was a clavichord. Now there's a fair few of those going for less than $7500...

Pamphilia said...

And there are pianos for less too! My next big purchase, I think.

Anonymous said...

Surely an early modernist can't be satisfied with a piano! Wouldn't a deliciously decorated Ruckers harpshicord be ideal?

http://www.decorations.keithhillharpsichords.com/flemish_dutchstyle.html

Probably a little more tha $7500 mind you...

Anonymous said...

Oops - this is what I wanted you to see:

Ruckers

Pamphilia said...

Hee. It's very pretty, if a bit too "busy" for my decor. But I doubt I could play any Schubert duets on it.

Anonymous said...

But I doubt I could play any Schubert duets on it.

Oh, I disagree. No pedals perhaps, but two keyboards ought to provide plenty of opportunity for some intimate work à quatre mains ;-)