Chippendale Walnut Desk and Bookcase,
Pennsylvania, c. 1770.
The shallow bookcase with dentil- and bead-molded cornice over two hinged doors opening to three molded adjustable shelves and three drawers, over slant-lid opening to an interior centering by a tombstone-paneled prospect door and four concave blocked drawers within and four additional secret drawers, all flanked by document drawers with engaged fluted pilaster fronts, and four valanced drawers over open compartments and two pairs of drawers, the case with four graduated thumb-molded drawers flanked by quarter columns, all resting on ogee bracket feet, bail brasses appear to be original, (old surface), open, 99cm wide, 93cm deep, 215cm high (39 1/2in wide, 37 1/2in deep, 85in high).

Provenance
Tag attached to a drawer key is inscribed 'Miss Houghton's Room', for Rosamond (Houghton) Whitney (1894-1969), whose grandfather, Henry Oscar Houghton, founded Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1852, and what became the Houghton Mifflin publishing company.

The lid with damage to thumb-molding and a shrinkage crack in to the upper left hand corner. Part of the right hand ogee foot broken. The left rear foot with a loss of about an inch and a half.