Antique 18th Century VOC Dutch Colonial Padouk Ebony Secretary Desk Bureau 1730
A very rare antique Dutch Colonial V.O.C. (Dutch East India Company) fall front bureau/desk on stand, Batavia, circa 1730.This desk in the Queen Anne style was made in the Dutch East Indies, known as Batavia (now Indonesia) under the Colonial Dutch. The desk is made from padouk (Amboyna) and ebony wood, the desk having an ebony 'rippled' gallery to the top that follows the outline of the desk. The paneled fall front with a pierced work escutcheon & key, surrounded with four circular bosses. The fall front encloses a fitted interior with four gothic arched ebony pigeon holes flanked with two banks of three 'ripple' fronted drawers, with one wider drawer to the middle. In the floor of the desk is a slide enclosing a 'secret' stotrage reservoir, the fall front is supported by a pair of pull-out lopers & pierced & engraved brass hinges to the inside.The base of the desk has a pair of drawers with pierced brass escutcheons & handles and corresponding circular brass bosses, t