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Writing desks of old


ParramattaPaul

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We've had threads about cursive, writing surfaces, writing boxes, and writing desks (including a picture of Thoreau's writing desk) so I thought this would be of interest.  I was passing through a historical website when I stumbled upon the following picture from the IWM archives.  I shows WWI Tommies in a 'reading room' hut in one of the rear area camps.  What is significant is that the tables are slanted as were the writing boxes of an earlier era.  I find myself wondering why we moved away from raised (slanted) writing surfaces, and how much more comfortable they were to use for long writing sessions.

 

May be an image of 1 person and standing

 

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7 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

We've had threads about cursive, writing surfaces, writing boxes, and writing desks (including a picture of Thoreau's writing desk) so I thought this would be of interest.  I was passing through a historical website when I stumbled upon the following picture from the IWM archives.  

<snip>

Please, excuse my ignorance, but what does IMW stand for?

Thanks.

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3 hours ago, PPPR said:

Please, excuse my ignorance, but what does IMW stand for?

Thanks.

IWM is the Imperial War Museum in London. It was established to honour the sacrifice of the millions who served in the defence of freedom, and as a historical research archive.

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3 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

IWM is the Imperial War Museum in London. It was established to honour the sacrifice of the millions who served in the defence of freedom, and as a historical research archive.

Thank you for the information. Coincidentally, over the last few weeks, I reread Ian Hay's The First Hundred Thousand  from 1916 and, for the first time, John Reed's The War in Eastern Europe from 1917.

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I'm ex-army and a veteran of three combat tours in Vietnam.  My father served in the army spending WWII in the South Pacific.  My grandfather was a sergeant in a highland regiment and served in France from February 1915 until mid-July 1916 when he got a 'blighty'.  More recently my eldest son served in the 1980s, and two granddaughters answered the call as well.

 

War is not glorious.  It is necessary because evil people and the governments they lead desire to enslave others -- as we see happening in Eastern Europe as we speak.  yet, we cannot ignore the reality by ignoring the history.  Nor can we ignore the sacrifices and sufferings endured by men and women (including those on the home front) in opposition to oppression.  This is the purpose of war museums and monuments such as the IWM, The Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and the war memorials found across freedom loving countries.

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Glad you wrote what you did @ParramattaPaul  I’ve never served.  I did major in history, so I’ve come across the war is hell statement, and wonder why that has to be relearned. I’m thinking I came at it from the wrong angle. What you wrote makes it clear that about necessity. Those who get sent into the war know it’s hell. Those who send them are often insulated from that reality. 

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3 minutes ago, Misfit said:

Glad you wrote what you did @ParramattaPaul  I’ve never served.  I did major in history, so I’ve come across the war is hell statement, and wonder why that has to be relearned. I’m thinking I came at it from the wrong angle. What you wrote makes it clear that about necessity. Those who get sent into the war know it’s hell. Those who send them are often insulated from that reality. 

Clausewitz wrote that 'all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means'.  That quote is often mis-stated as 'war is diplomacy by other means'.  The implication being that when words don't achieve a country's goals they resort to aggression, bombs and bullets. 

 

Are we not seeing this in the Ukraine?

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On 2/12/2023 at 9:10 PM, ParramattaPaul said:

I'm ex-army and a veteran of three combat tours in Vietnam.  My father served in the army spending WWII in the South Pacific.  My grandfather was a sergeant in a highland regiment and served in France from February 1915 until mid-July 1916 when he got a 'blighty'.  More recently my eldest son served in the 1980s, and two granddaughters answered the call as well.

 

War is not glorious.  It is necessary because evil people and the governments they lead desire to enslave others -- as we see happening in Eastern Europe as we speak.  yet, we cannot ignore the reality by ignoring the history.  Nor can we ignore the sacrifices and sufferings endured by men and women (including those on the home front) in opposition to oppression.  This is the purpose of war museums and monuments such as the IWM, The Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and the war memorials found across freedom loving countries.

 

Thank you for your and your familie's service!

 

Your grand-father helped save the life of my great-grand-father. 

Is it fair for an intelligent and family oriented mammal to be separated from his/her family and spend his/her life starved in a concrete jail?

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On 2/11/2023 at 10:36 PM, ParramattaPaul said:

We've had threads about cursive, writing surfaces, writing boxes, and writing desks (including a picture of Thoreau's writing desk) so I thought this would be of interest.  I was passing through a historical website when I stumbled upon the following picture from the IWM archives.  I shows WWI Tommies in a 'reading room' hut in one of the rear area camps.  What is significant is that the tables are slanted as were the writing boxes of an earlier era.  I find myself wondering why we moved away from raised (slanted) writing surfaces, and how much more comfortable they were to use for long writing sessions.

 

May be an image of 1 person and standing

 

 

Unfortunately the link to the image no longer works.  From reading your description it makes me think of "drafting tables", which used to be common before computers replaced pen & paper for technical drawings.  I liked them and miss them.  And in the spirit of @kazoolaw's response, my mouse and keyboard would have a hard time staying in place, too 😉

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15 minutes ago, XYZZY said:

 

Unfortunately the link to the image no longer works.  From reading your description it makes me think of "drafting tables", which used to be common before computers replaced pen & paper for technical drawings.  I liked them and miss them.  And in the spirit of @kazoolaw's response, my mouse and keyboard would have a hard time staying in place, too 😉

 

The link showed the interior of a poorly lit, simple timber-framed Army hut with two long, double sided tables running the length of the hut.  Each side of the tables had a fixed, angled writing surface.  Seated on benches on either side of each table were British soldiers reading or writing letters.  The angle of the writing surfaces would have been about 15 to possibly as much as 30 degrees.  In that, the tables are similar to a drafting table -- albeit a 30 ft. long one.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have a pull out keyboard tray on my desk which is adjustable, and I can get a bit of a slant to it, so when journaling or writing letters I move my keyboard onto the desk and use it for writing instead. So best of all worlds I guess?

 

Though, I wonder to what degree a slanted writing desk of old was something for the privileged though? I mean... if you do a lot of writing today, and have the space and means, you could absolutely still have a slanted writing desk. It's just not where you'd do all the other sorts of day to day tasks which required a flat surface... so it makes me imagine that most people of the past wouldn't have had a dedicated space either.

 

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2 hours ago, Jayebird said:

I have a pull out keyboard tray on my desk which is adjustable, and I can get a bit of a slant to it, so when journaling or writing letters I move my keyboard onto the desk and use it for writing instead. So best of all worlds I guess?

 

Though, I wonder to what degree a slanted writing desk of old was something for the privileged though? I mean... if you do a lot of writing today, and have the space and means, you could absolutely still have a slanted writing desk. It's just not where you'd do all the other sorts of day to day tasks which required a flat surface... so it makes me imagine that most people of the past wouldn't have had a dedicated space either.

 

We need to remember that people one or two hundred years ago did not have all the time fillers we have today.  They did not have computers, TVs, and gaming systems to fill their time.  There weren't computers and computer desks, TVs, home entertainment or stereo systems, and computer gaming systems occupying space in their homes.  Look around your home, or even the room you are in as you read this.  Imagine it as it would have been in 1823 or 1923.  Then, ask yourself where you might put a writing desk.  We must also remember that comunication over a distance wasn't done with a telephone, text messaging, Zoom, or email then.  It was done with pen or pencil and paper via 'snail mail'.

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Despite I can't see the image, a slanted writing surface is most comfortable when you write in upright standing position.

During my first 15 years in the office I had a slanted writing desk for sitting position - and it was great. It was way more comfortable than the strict horizontal desk plate I have now. The only disadvantage was: the coffee mug refused to stay at its position. 🤭

 

One life!

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17 hours ago, Jayebird said:

I have a pull out keyboard tray on my desk which is adjustable, and I can get a bit of a slant to it, so when journaling or writing letters I move my keyboard onto the desk and use it for writing instead. So best of all worlds I guess?

 

Though, I wonder to what degree a slanted writing desk of old was something for the privileged though? I mean... if you do a lot of writing today, and have the space and means, you could absolutely still have a slanted writing desk. It's just not where you'd do all the other sorts of day to day tasks which required a flat surface... so it makes me imagine that most people of the past wouldn't have had a dedicated space either.
 

 

 

I think of two different things when I read "slanted writing desk".  More often on FPN is pictures of portable boxes for ink, paper, pens, etc, that unfold, or open to expose a mildly slanted surface.  To be fair, those are typically described here as "portable writing desk".  I don't know the history of them, but certainly what goes through my mind is that they were nice pieces for people to have the money for them.  Maybe affectations.  Maybe, as you say, for people who didn't otherwise have the space.  But I generally imagine some Victorian general in his tent with his writing desk that is carried from camp to camp by his personal porter.🙂  Much like fountain pens today:  nice if that's where you want to spend your excess money and want better than what is in the office supply room.

 

The other thing I think of, though, are desks shown in the pictures of medieval scribes.  Go to google, search for "medieval scribe writing desk", and click on "images" for examples.  Or check out the images on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Miélot.  I just noticed my favorite image is public domain, so here goes:

 

220px-Escribano.jpg

 

Obviously these are illustrations and not photos, so they're subject to exaggeration by the artists.  But they also consistently appear to be:  not a container for traveling, to be a large work surface, and many have a much steeper incline.  Apparently that's what the pros used back in the day.  Having started copying the Bible onto (roughly) A4 pages, I can sympathize with those scribes: it's hell for my chronic lower back problems.  And they typically used much larger paper, so the top of the page requires even more leaning to see it (remember, no glasses back then!).  To my mind, the whole point of the slanted surface is that by getting that steep incline you are bringing the top of the page closer to the scribe.  Whether sitting or standing the result is the same.  Also, if you notice in the picture, the bottom of the parchment is rolled up and the top draped over the desk, so I assume that they constantly reposition the parchment as they progress down the page in order to keep the writing at their most comfortable position.

 

Here's a link to the blog of a sofer (Jewish scribe) that I follow, the first picture shows something similar.  Not the same degree of incline, but he's got a nice slot that the bottom of the parchment can go through, for repositioning as I just described.  http://lavlor.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-sefer-torah-1-getting-started.html

 

As for @InesF's comment about writing in a standing position:  I'm not so sure, but there's probably something to that.  Most of the slanted drafting tables that I saw in the 20th century were also high and accompanied by a tall chair.  Perhaps this was to allow people to switch between sitting and standing?  I do that at work: the computer I'm typing this on is on a height adjustable desk (but not slanted) so that I can alternate back and forth between sitting and standing.

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The parallel you draw between the ancient and mediaeval scribes writing desks and (pre-CADD) drafting tables is spot on.

 

General officers in the 18th and 19th centuries frequently passed written orders on via despatch riders who then carried them to subordinate commanders.  Of course a portable writing box was used to write the despatch.  Obviously, orders in the heat of battle were given orally and then passed on orally.  Historians cite a wrongly delivered order as the cause of the infamous charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.

 

A digression if I may.  An officer's 'personal porter' is called a "Batman".  His function is to attend to the officer's personal needs whilst the officer attends to the administrative and tactical responsibilites that are part and parcel of his position.  'Batman' is, or at least was when I was in the Australian Army, to each officer within a unit's structure.

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1 hour ago, XYZZY said:

some Victorian general in his tent with his writing desk that is carried from camp to camp by his personal porter.🙂  Much like fountain pens today

 

These days my valet carries my pens.

 

A Davenport desk would give one a slope and a place to put ones mug. For example:

https://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/301421/victorian-walnut-davenport-desk/#

Add lightness and simplicate.

 

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2 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

 

These days my valet carries my pens.

 

A Davenport desk would give one a slope and a place to put ones mug. For example:

https://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/301421/victorian-walnut-davenport-desk/#

Ooh, nice!  I don't need or want one, but nice none the less.

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18 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

Look around your home, or even the room you are in as you read this.  Imagine it as it would have been in 1823 or 1923.  Then, ask yourself where you might put a writing desk

They didn't have the same time fillers as us... but on the other hand if they wanted music, they needed to have instruments, not their cell phone. So some of their entertainment took more space. But more importantly, in the US as other parts of the world we have increased our home spaces as we added things in.

A single piece of furniture dedicated to a single task would still have been a luxury for many. I imagine many a farm house or factory workers' home found the family writing correspondence at the kitchen table, the same place many kids still do their homework. And somebody with a bit more means, or for whom writing was particularly important might have upgraded first to a secretary which with a drop down leaf to create a temporary (and usually horizontal) writing surface. It would be a lot easier to place a portable writing desk on top of such as surface as needed than have an entire slanted desk. I have one of these secretaries from my grandmother (along with an equally practical Hoosier hutch) and it's designed to meet a lot of needs in a small yet elegant space.

 

I'm not saying nobody had slanted writing desks (like the Davenport Karmachanic found) but that we often forget how modest the living conditions of most people were.

 

The images of monks are displaying somebody at work - this is their full time job.

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In the days of pen, ink, ledger books and the like sloping desks were quite common. I have a work desk/cabinet which would would have been seen in a small busines such as a general store, grocers or similar.

 

The lid swings down to give a sloping writing area.

 

DSC00856.JPG.781473df8cd10682674575ef34cf7def.JPG

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