Cabinets and Desks

This collection of cabinets and desks is quite varied in its nature and is not all-inclusive either in terms of what Lutyens designed or we have made. It is however intended to give a flavour of our favourite pieces.

The two gilt and lacquer cabinets – large and small – may also be made in a show wood and the interior may be painted any colour though Lutyens himself favoured terracotta red, which he used repeatedly. The original cabinet has been seen at auction at least twice since the mid-eighties but it has never been seen with its base. We therefore improvised on this element, using Lutyens’s details from other pieces in order to come up with what might have been.

The secretaire is similarly imposing in style and grandeur. The desk beneath the display cabinet is available as a stand-alone piece and the display cabinet itself may be used with the base to the gilt and lacquer cabinet.

Lutyens designed the Octagonal Desk for the Chairman of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, (later BP) for their London headquarters. Here shown with a tooled leather top, we are able to make it with different working surfaces for different purposes. In this example, the complex under-structure is reflected in the tooled leather above. The octagonal legs add complexity.

We have used the language and detail of the Octagonal Desk to develop the Knebworth desks and side table. We have made the desk as both a single and double-seater and the side table has a symmetrical under-structure without the foot well. All these tables can be made to any length and come with or without drawers.

The Meadowes Corner desk is a modern adaptation of a very similar piece designed by Lutyens for New Delhi, here shown in a burr Elm veneer.

The Plan Chest with its numbered drawers is our own design, though one that is consistent with Lutyens’s detailing. In this, our own original, we store our collection of Lutyens’s drawings.