Victorian Burr Walnut Davenport with Secret Fretwork Box

• Fretwork - Pierced intricate decorative patterns, cut with a fine saw and generally found around the galleries of desk tops, open-hanging shelves and small tables.
  
  In open fret, the timber is completely pierced, giving an appearance of great lightness and delicacy.
  
  With blind fret, as seen in Chinoiserie styles of Chippendale, the fretwork is applied like a moulding to a solid panel.
• Gallery - On furniture, a gallery is a small upright section, frequently pierced and decorated, around the tops of small items of furniture, such as davenports, side tables, and so forth. Galleries are made in brass or bronze,and be fretted, pierced or solid timber. A three-quarter gallery is one that surrounds three of the four sides of a table, desk or other top.
• Blind Tooling / Blind Tooled - Blind tooling is a technique used in the decoration of leather goods such as book covers, belts, and wallets. It involves the use of specialized tools to impress designs and patterns onto the surface of the leather without the use of added colour.
  
  The process involves the use of a variety of tools, including stamps, embossing tools, and finishing tools, which are used to create various textures and patterns on the leather surface. The tools are heated, and then pressed onto the leather, leaving an impression. The tools can be used to create designs that are simple or complex, with a variety of textures and patterns, including geometric shapes, florals, or scenes. The leather is then burnished to enhance the design and give it a smooth finish.
• Pierced Decoration - Ornamental woodwork with part of the background cut through and removed to produce an open-work pattern.
• Victorian Period - The Victorian period of furniture and decorative arts design covers the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers used and modified many historical styles such as Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others, although use of some styles, such as English Rococo and Gothic tended to dominate the furniture manufacture of the period.
  
  The Victorian period was preceded by the Regency and William IV periods, and followed by the Edwardian period, named for Edward VII (1841 ? 1910) who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India for the brief period from 1901 until his death in 1910.
• Burr - Burr (or in the USA, burl) is the timber from the knotted roots or deformed branch of the tree, which when cut, displays the small circular knots in various gradations of colour. It is always cut into a decorative veneer, most commonly seen as burr walnut on 19th century furniture.
• Faux - A French word meaning "false", but when used in decorative arts, the intention is not to deceive, but to simulate the decorative effects of the more expensive material it is imitating. The term " faux bois" meaning "false wood" refers to a furniture item that has been decorated with a marked grain (woodgrain finish)  to imitate a more expensive timber.
• Tooled - Decoration of a leather surface, usually by stamping the surface with a heated punch or wheel containing foliate or geometric designs. In blind tooling the surface of the punch or wheel is in direct contact with the leather, while in gold tooling, a ribbon of gold leaf is placed between the punch or wheel and the leather, and once they have been applied, the excess gold is brushed off, leaving only the design.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• davenport desks 184