Arts & Crafts Style 1910 desk

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I found a desk in an antique shop. It is the type with the slant top that is hinged down and has cubby holes. What specifically should I look for to make sure it is authentic? And what is the approximate worth. I am not a serious collector, I have just always wanted a desk like this.

-- Cori Cusker (ccusker@mindspring.com), April 20, 1999

Answers

Cori, I'm not being flippant when I say, given what you have shared about yourself, if you can afford it, buy it.

What you've told us is that you are not building a collection, that is, you are not buying for conneseurship, nor are you buying for resale, nor for investment... just that you have always wanted a desk like this, and now you've found one.

You haven't told us anything (really) about the desk. The headline says it's Arts and Crafts Style. You could find a generic Arts & Crafts style desk at auction for $3-500; you could find a signed, original surface, Gustav desk at auction for 60 times the high end of that range; so asking, in this venue, for approximate value, is simply an inappropriate question. What you're really asking is, is this particular desk a $500 desk, or a $1500, or even a $5000 desk...and we cannot answer that, sorry. You could answer it, in time, by finding enough similar pieces and keeping track of the asking prices, or, better yet, the selling prices, but the problem is that by the time tou got enough information to determine that this was a good buy, it would be gone.

Sadly, your other question, what to look for to determine authenticity, is almost as impossible to answer in this manner. Your first line of inquiry should be directed the dealer. Assuming that there is someone knowledgeable at the shop, just come right out and ask. A real dealer, while always trying to "sell" will nearly always also be happy to "teach". For your part, you should be standing in judgement both of the story AND the storyteller. If either of them are unconvincing, be prepared to walk away. And most important, even if both are convincing, and you decide that you will make the purchase, INSIST on a written receipt with as much information included as you can get: the style, the date, acknowledgement of any repairs, restorations or alterations are the absolute minimum. It's not that you're likely to find out in the next week that it's all a pack of lies; rather you are searching for a dealer who will stand by her/his merchandise. Find that person and you have found someone you can probably trust, and from whom you can learn more than you could ever hope to learn on an anonymous internet forum.

In the meantime, head for your local public library and mine it for whatever it has. Not familiar with library research? ASK THE LIBRARIAN! Most of their day is filled with the trivia of checking out books and collecting nickle fines; they live for someone coming in with a real question or search topic. And even if your library is a tiny rural affair, Interlibrary Loans can bring you the resources of the largest library.

And if that's not enough, check out Arts & Crafts on the Web. This is the "Links" page from The Arts and Crafts Review, and there's more than enough on the site and on the linked sites to keep you busy and out of trouble for quite awhile.

But the bottom line still is, if you have always wanted a desk like the one you have found, and if you can afford it, buy it. You have time to learn about it later, and if, worst case, you discover it is less than you had hoped, write off your disappointment as tuition, and go out and try again.

Good luck.

-- Charles Gardiner (cgard@rclink.net), April 24, 1999.


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