Vintage View: Art Deco Cocktail cabinet c1930.
I HAVE my eye out for a new writing table. Until now, my frantic tapping has been supported by a marble topped Victorian side table. It looks elegant enough despite heartless torture in the grandmother’s restoration chamber. Even shorn of a brass top rail, it’s worth €25 of anyone’s money. Still, its rocky surface is a freezing penance to the wrists. Having gone a bit demented over mid-century rosewood, I was intrigued to find that dealers here and in the UK, have made a sly discovery.
If you prise off the angular mirror from a fairly ugly 1970s knee-hole dressing table, and fill the supporting screw holes politely with a sawdust, wax and spit mixture, it can deliver a rather handsome if compact, shallow desk. Clearly uncertain as to how to describe these amputees, many vendors cheerfully offer a ‘matching mirror’. How kind.
