A work desk!

[famedglory]

This desk is so fantastic!! My dolls are insanely jealous and will be happy just when they have a functioning shelf to sit on.

[E-Beth]

Geez, E-Beth!! And you sew, too! That's fantastic!

I'll tell you, I got the doll(s) to sew for. Not to make furniture for! This hobby is consuming my brains.

[kurosu.chan]

Thanks famedglory!

E-Beth, of course! There's no other way it could possibly happen!

[Dirili]

Geez, E-Beth!! And you sew, too! That's fantastic!

I'll tell you, I got the doll(s) to sew for. Not to make furniture for! This hobby is consuming my brains.

hehe, I know the feeling....

[mica]

I LOVE that you can take it apart to store
fantastic desk!

[kurosu.chan]

I LOVE that you can take it apart to store
fantastic desk!

Thank you! I just moved all my doll stuff last night, too, so now I really love that feature! I'm trying to move my doll house into my room so I can use it more often...

[catshem]

Awesome job! Finding this right after I talked to my husband about making a simple dresser for my 1/6ers makes me want to make ALL THE FURNITURE.

[kurosu.chan]

Wow, thanks so much Moondog!

Catshem, thank you!! But...if it's a dresser, you can cheat! I see jewelry boxes shaped like dressers all the time at Goodwill and thrift stores, and they're almost always perfect for 1/6.

[maywong]

Nice job.

[Swan]

On the subject of mortise and tenon joints:

I have, in my living room, an old cypress chest that was built by my grear great great great grandfather, Amos Hursh *probably* in the 1830's. He had a "truck garden" and floated the vegetables, by raft, down the Ohio River, to the Mississippi until he got to the market in New Orleans.

Back before the Civil war, Louisiana was a slaveholding state. New Orleans had many beautiful cypress swamps and Amos traded the vegetables for "wide cypress boards" (according to the handwritten diary of his daughter, which I also have). The boards, which were most likely hand cut by slave labor, Amos then took, by oxcart, back UP the trails returning to Ohio. he then built the cypress chest, without nails or any metal fasteners except for the ancient lock (which, sadly, along with the original hinges, are now lost). The chest is built with mortise and tenon joints.

Amos built the chest for his wife, Prudence Meacum Hursh and painted it bright yellow and black. His daughter, Margarete Alice (Hursh) Hartung painted it forest green according to her diary. When Margarete died, my great grandmother, Lenore Celesta (Hartung) Jaques gave it to HER daughter, Elsie, my grandmother (who had it antiqued white), along with the diary, Amos' medical books, a china-headed doll from 1907 and family quilts, all of which I still own. Eventually the chest came down to me and I treasure it and its contents.

When we had the chest renovated in the 1980's (and stained a natural color, with paint flecks remaining to mark its history), I got a real surprise! The man who was working on it was enchanted with the chest and told me more about its manufacture. The 1830's was BEFORE *any* mechanized tools, so every bit of it was made by hand labor and human sweat, but he saved the best for last "You know, mortise and tenon joints are sort of a "tour de force" with carpenters back beofre the Civil war." I hadn't known. I asked him why "Well, they hadn't yet come up with routing saws or jigs. They had drew the mortises and tenons on the wood and matched them by eye, and then cut them out with small thin-bladed saws. A carpenter was known by the neatness of his joints. What you have here... is priceless! These joints are as solid today as the day this chest was put together!"

Today the chest stands in my living room, it's about five feet long by two wide and two and a half deep. After my great great great grandmother wrote her history of it, my great grandmother did, my grandmother and I have kept up the tradition, writing by hand where the chest has been (it has traveled by covered wagon, ox-cart, train and moving van) where it has been (Ohio, Missouri, Texas, California, New Mexico) it has been through the Civil War (Ohio) and the Long Beach Earthquake, the San Fernando/Sylmar, the Whittier Narrows and the Loma Prieta Quakes. In Margarite Alice's diary she notes that my great great grandfather tried his "for real Barlow knife" on the chest and got a lickin' for it. The four parallel deep grooves are still there. The deep dents, where my grandfather placed his heavy drill press on it, remain. The hinges and lock are brass replicas of period hardware. But best of all, are those beautiful, precision made mortise and tenon joints!

Swan