There isn't anything that matches the look or feel of sitting down at a real roll top desk to do work. While the desk doesn't exactly lend itself to today's technology (even laptops can feel cumbersome on them), for writing, paying bills or other small tasks, a roll top desk offers an experience you won't find with other desks.
The real wood gives your home some character and the small compartments and many drawers lend themselves to all manners of storage. For many people who love the idea of working at a "real" desk, there isn't anything quite like the roll top.
The roll top desk is actually a reworking of a previous desk known as a "pedestal desk." It was created to encompass the characteristics of the pedestal desk and also features some of the features of a Carlton house desk and a Bureau a gradin.
The desk features a beautiful tabletop surface that sits on top of a series of drawers and is home to a series of compartments and smaller drawers, all of which can be covered by slender wooden slats that slide or roll through grooves on the sides of the desk (which are raised).
Other desks that feature these wooden slats are the cylinder desk and the tambour desk, though with the tambour desk, the slats are pushed horizontally instead of vertically.
Roll top desks quickly became very popular because they could be produced rapidly. The wooden slats were easy to make, unlike the desk's predecessors whose characteristics and wood had to be heavily treated to enable the sliding without breakage or warping.
For many years at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the roll top desk was a regular feature of small and medium sized offices. The decline of the roll top desk matched the growing level of business correspondence as the growing correspondence levels created the need for larger storage systems and the smaller compartments of the roll top desks became obsolete.
These days the roll top desk is very popular among antique hunters. The desk was produced in such large numbers that finding an authentic roll top desk isn't very difficult.
Many people, especially those who love authentic wooden furniture, have at least one roll top desk in their homes. With today's trend of cheap and easily disposable and replaceable furniture which can be purchased in Bhiwandi furniture market, the authentic wood working of a roll top desk is now considered to be something special!
