OFFICE FURNITURE AND ACCESSORIES : The Selection of.— It is only within comparatively recent years that manufacturers have paid attention to the peculiar needs of the business and professional community as regards office appointments and office furniture. The old-fashioned desk at which the clerk perched on his high stool and the plain mahogany table represented practically the whole office furniture of twenty years back.
The advent of the roll-top desk may be said to have initiated the new order of things. This new pattern of desk was at once a success, and its popularity has steadily increased since the date of its introduction. In these days of widening interests and diverse activities, the problem confronting most people is that affecting the care of correspondence or memoranda in such manner as to supplement the memory and increase the productiveness of brain-work.
This problem has found its solutim: in the roll-top desk, which is pro vided with pigeon-holes and letter-files readily and conveniently placed for the reception of all types of documents. The privacy of the roll-top desk is another powerful argument in its favour and an excellent reason for its popularity. The closing of the curtain automatically locks the whole desk, and the user, if called away suddenly, is under no necessity of putting away papers and private memoranda, but can, by pulling down the sliding top, place everything in security and take up work again exactly as left.
The roll-top desk, like many other excellent office appliances, is often called American, though its invention is claimed by British firms, and, indeed, some of the best office furniture in the world is made in Great Britain by British workmen. The favourite pattern of roll-top desk is that furnished with three or four pedestal drawers on each side of the knee space, each desk having a wide, deep, double drawer in the right-hand pedestal partitioned for large books, and a centre drawer in the knee-space equipped with a separate lock with a flat key. The letter-file drawers and document boxes are furnished with card-holders, in which are placed cards appropriate to the uses to which the different drawers are applied.
The user of a roll-top desk is, in fact, an easy master of his correspond ence and papers, being called upon to give the minimum of attention to the proper custody of these important details. Formerly the roll-top desk required a fair outlay of money, but competition and production have had their natural effect on the industry. Nowadays desks can be purchased from a few pounds upwards, the cheaper desks lacking only the niceties of construc tion and the artistic finish which are naturally found in the most expensive.
The flat-top drop cabinet is another modern innovation, the invention of which has followed the universal employment of the typewriter. Quite a number of business men operate the typewriter themselves, in which case the drop cabinet is a valuable piece of office furniture for personal use. In any case it is extremely useful where typewriters are employed to do the work of the office. The drop cabinet is so constructed that when the desk is lowered the typewriter is lowered into the desk, and is so nicely balanced that only a very slight force is required to bring the typewriter back into place for writing. In this style of cabinet the locking of the top drawer automatically locks all the drawers.
The particular convenience of the drop cabinet is, of course, that it may be used as a desk or a typewriter table, the change from one to the other being made by the simple raising or lowering of the desk.
The drop cabinet principle is also introduced in conjunction with the roll-top desk, the closing of the roll-top automatically lowering the writing machine and locking all the drawers. This is in many offices a particularly useful piece of furniture.
Allusion has been made in an earlier paragraph to the fact that manu facturers of office furniture have of late years seen the wisdom of catering for the small office as well as for the business of the large concerns. This is an indication of how those who desire to keep their expenditure on office fittings within certain limits are studied by the firms catering for this trade.