Any list of desk forms and types encountered in the modern 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...

 or home, and in antique

Antiques

An antique is an old collectible item. It is collected or desirable because of its age , beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features...

 stores, is incomplete and contradictory given the variations in the naming of desks, as a simple lookup in two or three of the reference books below will demonstrate. Each article discusses the name variations and the most general article of all, 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...

, makes comparisons between several forms and places them in historical context.

The division between "desk form" and "desk type" presented here is arbitrary, since there is no consensus as how to differentiate function, form, type and style in these matters, as the books in the reference section below show. A form here is something rather specific, while a type can be applied to any given form or all of them.

Desk forms

• 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...
  
  
• Bargueno desk
  Bargueno desk
  The Bargueño is a desk first produced in the 15th century that continues to be produced to this day. The only other style of desk which is known to have been continuously produced for so long is the trestle desk, but some authorities exclude this desk from consideration because in early times it...
  
  
• Bible box
  Bible box
  A Bible box is a small container originally meant to store and/or use a Bible.In much of Europe this kind of box was produced in many different materials, such as wood, metal or ceramics, in simple or extremely ornate styles. Bible boxes were popular in the 17th century...
  
  
• Bonheur du jour
  Bonheur du jour
  A bonheur du jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers about 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable...
  
  
• Bureau à gradin
  Bureau a gradin
  A bureau à gradin is an antique desk form resembling a writing table with, in addition, one or several tiers of small drawers and pigeonholes built on part of the desktop surface. Usually the drawers and pigeonholes directly face the user, but they can also surround three sides of the desk, as is...
  
  
• Bureau plat, see Writing table
  Writing table
  A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk...
  
  
• Bureau Mazarin
  Bureau Mazarin
  The bureau Mazarin is a 17th century desk form named more or less in memory of Cardinal Mazarin, regent of France from 1642 to 1661. It is the earliest predecessor of the pedestal desk and differs from it by having only two tiers of drawers or three tiers of rather small drawers under the...
  
  
• Butler's desk
  Butler's desk
  In England, the Butler's Desk, a piece of furniture designed for those in service to fine houses to keep documents and records, was eminently practical and based on the ever growing needs of an increasingly literate group of persons in service....
  
  
• Carlton house desk
  Carlton House desk
  A Carlton House desk is a specific antique desk form within the more general bureau à gradin form. This specific form is supposed to have been designed in the 18th century for the Prince of Wales by George Hepplewhite. It is named after Carlton House, which was at the time the London residence...
  
  
• Carrel desk
  Carrel desk
  A carrel desk is a small desk featuring high sides meant to visually isolate its user from any surroundings either partially or totally. They were a predecessor to the more recent cubicle desk.- Description :...
  
  
• Cheveret desk
  Cheveret desk
  A Cheveret desk is an antique desk of very small size which features a single drawer under the writing surface. In some occasions small drawers and pigeonholes are built on top, at the back, as in a smaller form of a bureau à gradin...
  
  
• Credenza desk
  Credenza desk
  A credenza desk is a modern desk form usually placed next to a wall as a secondary work surface to that of another desk, such as a pedestal desk, in a typical executive office...
  
  
• Cubicle desk
• Cylinder desk
  Cylinder desk
  The cylinder desk is a desk that resembles a Bureau Mazarin or a writing table equipped with small stacked shelves in front of the user's main work surface, and a revolving cylinder part that comes down to hide and lock up the working papers when the desk is not in use...
  
  
• Davenport desk
  Davenport desk
  A Davenport desk, is a small desk with an inclined lifting desktop attached with hinges to the back of the body. Lifting the desktop accesses a large compartment with storage space for paper and other writing implements, and smaller spaces in the forms of small drawers and pigeonholes...
  
  
• Desk and bench
  Desk and bench
  A Desk and bench can be an antique or a modern form of desk combined with a small bench or a stool made in exactly the same style and material. The desk is usually not very big and meant to be placed against a wall, in a little room or a hallway. Because of this intended venue and its small size...
  
  
• Desk on a chest
  Desk on a chest
  A Desk on a chest is an antique Portable desk made up of two chests, the bottom one usually having drawers and the top one having a hinged desk surface which also serves as a side mounted lid...
  
  
• Desk on a frame
  Desk on a frame
  The desk on a frame is usually an antique form made up of two pieces of furniture. The first piece is a fairly large and closable portable desk with a slanted hinged top giving access to the writing surface and utility nooks and small drawers. The second piece is a stand made for it in the same...
  
  
• Drawing table
• Ergonomic desk
• Escritoire
  Escritoire
  An escritoire or secretary desk comes in various styles. One version is a small, portable writing desk with a sloping front door, hinged at the bottom edge, that can be opened downwards to provide a writing surface. It is usually larger than a lap desk...
  
  
• 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...
  
  
• Fire screen desk
  Fire screen desk
  The fire screen desk was a very small antique desk meant to be placed in front of a fireplace to keep a user's feet warm while he or she was stationary while writing...
  
  
• Lap desk
  Lap desk
  -Antique lap desk:As an antique the lap desk is a smaller variant of the writing slope. It is also called a writing box or a writing cabinet. In certain instances it is known as a portable desk, a term which is usually applied to larger forms. Most antique lap desks are really meant to be used on...
  
  
• Lectern desk
  Lectern desk
  The lectern desk is composed of two distinct forms, antique and modern.-Antique lectern desk:The antique is basically a lectern fitted with the conveniences needed to make writing easy, such as room for paper and writing implements. In a sense, it is a specialised and rarer form of standing desk...
  
  
• Liseuse desk
  Liseuse desk
  A Liseuse desk is a medium sized writing table with a small hinged panel in the middle which can spring up by the aid of a mechanism or be propped up at a desired angle to facilitate reading, or writing on its slanted surface...
  
  
• Moore desk
  Moore desk
  A Moore Desk is not one but two large antique desk forms.The "Moore Office Queen" is a massive desk, made for a sitting user. From the outside it looks, when closed, much like its competitor, the Wooton desk but it differs from it in several ways. For one, it has but a single large door to lock...
  
  
• Partners desk
  Partners desk
  A partners desk is an antique desk form which is basically two pedestal desks constructed from the start as one large desk joined at the front, for two users working while facing each other...
  
  
• 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...
  
  
• Plantation desk
  Plantation desk
  A Plantation desk is an antique desk form. It is thought to have been originally used as a mail desk by postmen. The form is known to have been used on Southern plantations in the United States, but it is not limited to them. For some time communities of Shakers in New England built a large...
  
  
• Rolltop desk
  Rolltop desk
  A rolltop desk is a 19th century reworking of the pedestal desk with, in addition, a series of stacked compartments, shelves, drawers and nooks in front of the user, much like the bureau à gradin or the Carlton House desk...
  
  
• Secretaire en portefeuille
  Secretaire en portefeuille
  The secretaire en portefeuille breaks all records for slimness in desks and perhaps even in all furniture. It is an antique desk form which is usually mounted on rollers at the end of four jutting legs. The legs in turn support what looks like an oversize vertically mounted wooden pizza box...
  
  
• Secretary desk
  Secretary desk
  A secretary desk is made of a base of wide drawers topped by a desk with a hinged desktop surface, which is in turn topped by a bookcase usually closed with a pair of doors, often made of glass...
  
  
• Shtender
• Slant top desk
  Slant top desk
  The slant top desk can be considered in some ways as the ancestor or the little brother, of the secretary desk for it is for all practical purposes a secretary desk without the massive bookcase on top of it...
  
  
• Spinet desk
  Spinet desk
  A spinet desk is an antique desk form which has the exterior shape of a slightly higher than usual writing table, fitted with a single drawer under the whole length of the flat top surface. The spinet desk is so named because when closed it resembles a spinet, a musical instrument of the...
  
  
• Standing desk
  Standing desk
  A standing desk is both an antique desk and a modern desk form conceived for writing and/or reading while standing up or while sitting on a high stool. The term stand-up or stand up desk is also used...
  
  
• Tambour desk
  Tambour desk
  A tambour desk is a desk with desktop-based drawers and pigeonholes, in a way resembling bureau à gradin. The small drawers and nooks are covered, when required, by reeded or slatted shutters, tambours, which usually retract in the two sides, left and right...
  
  
• Telephone desk
  Telephone desk
  The telephone desk is the smallest kind of fixed desk. Its traditional role is to provide a working surface barely large enough to write notes while speaking on the telephone, and in some cases to support the telephone or hold telephone books. In early generations of telephones the phone...
  
  
• Trestle desk
  Trestle desk
  There are two kinds of trestle desks, the antique form and the modern improvisation.-Antique trestle desk:The antique trestle desk is usually very much like the writing table desk form, which offers a simple flat desktop surface with a few drawers underneath it...
  
  
• Typewriter desk
  Typewriter desk
  A typewriter desk is an antique desk form meant to hold a typewriter in an efficient position for the typist. This position is usually a few inches lower than the 29 inch height of the typical antique desktop....
  
  
• Vanity
  Lowboy
  A lowboy is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers. Both were favourite pieces of the 18th century, both in England and in the United States; the lowboy was most frequently used as a dressing-table , but sometimes as...
  
  
• Wooton desk
  Wooton desk
  The Wooton desk is a variation of the Fall front desk. It is the embodiment of the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption which swept over moneyed society in the United States at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and was described by Thorstein Veblen in his book The...
  
  
• Writing armchair
  Writing armchair
  The writing armchair has an antique and a modern form.In its antique form it is known as a writing armchair in the United States and as a tablet armchair in the United Kingdom. It is more often than not a Windsor style armchair with a circular or oval pad or tablet replacing the right arm or...
  
  
• Writing desk
  Writing desk
  A writing desk or bureau acts as a kind of compact office. Traditionally, a writing desk is for writing letters by hand. It usually has a top that closes to hide current work, which makes the room containing it look tidy, maintains privacy, and protects the work. The closing top may contain...
  
  
• Writing table
  Writing table
  A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk...
  
  

Desk types

• Campaign desk
  Campaign desk
  A campaign desk is an antique desk of normal size which was used by officers and their staffs in rear areas during a military campaign.The campaign desk was usually the private property of the officer, as was his uniform and other military implements. It was in general handcrafted by a master...
  
  
• Computer desk
  Computer desk
  The ergonomic desk and related computer desk are furniture pieces designed to comfortably and aesthetically provide a working surface and house or conceal office equipment including computers, peripherals and cabling for office and home-office users....
  
  
• Field desk
  Field desk
  A field desk is a portable desk which is meant to be used in rear areas near a battlefield and moved around rather frequently in difficult conditions. It is in contrast to the campaign desk, which is usually heavier and meant for areas further in the rear....
  
  
• Games table desk
  Games table desk
  A Games table desk is an antique desk form which combines the type of surface required for writing with a surface etched or veneered in the pattern of a given board game. It also provides sufficient storage space for writing implements and a separate space for storing game accessories such as...
  
  
• Mechanical desk
  Mechanical desk
  A mechanical desk is usually an antique desk type which was produced during the 18th or the 19th century. At one extreme there are desks furnished with a multitude of panels that swing out while stacks of small drawers pop up when a user lowers or extracts the main writing surface or desktop from a...
  
  
• Metamorphic library steps
  Metamorphic library steps
  Metamorphic library steps are a type of archaic dual-use furniture, consisting of a small folding staircase that can be transformed into chair or desk form...
  
   which sometimes were meant to be transformed into a writing table
• Portable desk
  Portable desk
  The portable desk has not one but many forms. In a sense, the portable desk is a long-lost ancestor of the portable computer, and the modern laptop could be considered an atavistic grandchild of the 19th-century Lap desk....
  
  
• School desk
• Student desk
• Treadmill desk
  Treadmill desk
  A treadmill desk or treadmill workstation is a working desk built around a treadmill.A person using the treadmill desk walks slowly on the treadmill while continuing to perform office tasks at the desk. The aim of a treadmill desk is to integrate movement and gentle exercise into the working day of...
  
  

See also these particular desks

• Bureau du Roi
  Bureau du Roi
  The Bureau du Roi , also known as Louis XV's roll-top secretary , is the richly ornamented royal Cylinder desk whose construction was done at the end of Louis XV reign....
  
  
• Henry VIII's writing desk
  Henry VIII's writing desk
  Henry VIII's writing desk was made in about 1525-6, it is a product of the royal workshops and is lavishly embellished with ornamental motifs introduced to Britain by continental artists...
  
  
• Resolute desk
  Resolute desk
  The Resolute desk is a large, nineteenth-century partners' desk often chosen by presidents of the United States for use in the White House Oval Office as the Oval Office desk. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the timbers of the British...