Huyze Herkert, morning room: the desk

The morning room was the domain of the lady of the house. Until now, I have given priority to a certain amount of spielerei with my cabinet dollhouse. This certainly fits in this room, as it was here that the lady received her less formal callers, her close friends, with whom — or so I like to imagine — she enjoyed showing off her elegant dollhouse a little. However, the morning room was primarily the space from which women with servants managed the household (and Lady Herkert certainly does have them!): here, the servants received their instructions for the day, the lady did her correspondence, and kept her accounts. A desk was therefore an absolute necessity – and the ideal opportunity to design and make my first piece of furniture from scratch!

My go-to place for inspiration for historically accurate furniture and decoration is 1stDibs.com. After researching the characteristic features of Victorian ladies’ desks, I came up with the following design (for which I use SketchUp):

This design is not yet complete, but it does contain the exact components to be cut with my Cricut Maker 4. (Which I asked for as a birthday present last year. The first machine broke down after only three uses; the second started acting up after just two uses. My initial enthusiasm quickly turned into frustration, but by now I’ve learned how to handle the machine to keep it running, and I’m a fan again.) Once the design is finished, I convert all the pieces into a .dxf file, which I can then import into Design Space, ready to be cut. It looks like this:

The components were cut from 1.6 mm thick basswood. They then received two coats of sapelli dye, after which I left them to dry for 12 hours under a large stack of my heaviest books. The wood warps quite severely after being treated with the dye! Fortunately, the trick with the books worked (phew!), although I did feel a moment of panic the first time I saw it happen.

Then came the assembly process (which took many hours). The legs were bought separately, but they had to be shortened slightly.

For the railing, I used coffee stirrers and small spindles from model shipbuilding supplies (I'm not sure I'm using the correct English terms here, but I hope it's clear what I mean.). I drew the undercoat of the flowers with acrylic markers and finished them off with acrylic paint. Finally, the entire piece received a coat of varnish. At the last dollhouse fair I attended in March in The Netherlands, I found the perfect sheet of very thin, dark green leather for the desktop. Such a lucky find (although I was, of course, consciously looking for it)! I am so happy with it. It truly completes the piece. Let’s hope that Lady Herkert is happy with it too and enjoys running her household sitting at her desk😊.







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