Bonheur-du-Jour - a ladies writing desk

 A Bonheur-du-Jour, which loosely translates to - 'happiness of the day'.  It is the French term for a ladies writing desk. I made it several years ago for my wife.  It was the project that started me off making complicated pieces with secret compartments.  Prior to this I had made simple pieces - coffee tables, a few beds, and my clocks.

The design is my own, but is an amalgam of a whole range of ideas gathered from researching this classic piece of furniture.  It is made mainly from solid  Jarrah, with maple and Vavona veneers, and stringing and bandings.  Plus some small shell inlays.

It has 27 drawers, and range of secret compartments, together with various removable trays, a pull out leather bound A3 drawing slope., and another smaller A5 reading or writing slope. It also houses a Sankyo 72 note musical movement,

Here goes .... this is a long post!

The Desk

Construction is traditional M&T, with dovetailed drawers. Though I did use modern soft close drawer slides.

This desk surface is covered with book matched red maple burl veneer, with a tulip wood boarder surrounded by jarrah cross-banded and a moulded edge, which includes additional black and white bandings that are used on other parts of the desk.  It was a complicated assembly which had extra wide cross banding added to enable register-blocks to we glued on underr side to ensure its postion was perfect.

Desk top after its first coat of polyurethane.

It also has, for me at that time, very complex corners, with edge mouldings and more bandings!

The desks legs are tapered and following a theme across the whole desk have inserted black corners, fine maple stringing, Vavona inserts at the top, together with more black and white cross bandings and traditional brass feet.

You'll have noticed some slight miss alignments on some of the mitres!!

The lower jarrah/white black/white band which goes all the way round the desk was a complicated addition in terms of the many small mitred pieces.

The desk part has two rows of drawers. Three at the top, and two larger ones below. They all have solid jarrah fronts, with  red burl maple book-matched inlays, surrounded by a tulip wood banding, plus a jarrah cock bead.

The long narrow top middle drawer is a pull-out A3 sized drawing/writing/reading slope. 

Its angle can be adjusted and there is a book/pencil rest that fits into the two brass holes just visible on the bottom edge of the slope. 

The slope is covered with specially commissioned made-to-measure green embossed leather.

The mechanism for raising and adjusting the angle of the slope.
The three brass marks just visible on the drawer side when lined up with the front edge of the desk, show where the slope can be locked in place. Locking is achieved by sliding bolts fixed underneath the drawer.

The two small out drawers hold a quill pen together rules, pencils, and a range of drawing equipment.

Next we have the two main drawers of the desk.   The large left hand drawer contains a range of lidded compartments and a removable pen tray. It also has a traditional 'blotter' - back left had side. The drawer has a secret compartment in its base.

The large right hand desk drawer has more trays and compartments plus three secret drawers in the back.

Access is achieved by removing the tray and raising the pieces of wood that supports the tray.

The Secretaire
This is the cabinet that fits on top of the desk. It has three cupboard doors with a drawer below each. and a traditional brass gallery around the top.

While the left and centre drawers are plain, the right hand drawer has a removable tray for a collection of my families old fountain pens.

The left hand cupboard door opens onto two small lower drawers, with stationary slots above.

The insides of the left and right hand cupboard doors are covered with maple veneer and a woven lattice design of tulip wood bandings.

The centre cupboard has a pull down door, covered with a custom made embossed leather writing slope, which matches the leather on the A3 drawing board. This gives access to a removable tray with sealing wax, a seal, a spirit burner to melt the wax, and an ink well.

The musical movements is more visible once the tray is removed.  It is a Sankyo 72 note, three tune movement. To rewind the movement, the drawer below has to be removed to access the winding key.

Above the musical movement are three drawers.

These open individually, and also slide forward as a group giving access to the secret stationary holder behind. This folds down onto the musical movement. It would probably have housed the ladies 'lover-letters' in the original days of the Bonheur-du-Jour.

The right hand cupboard opens onto 10 more small drawers, with a small locked door in the middle ......................................

Opening the locked door reveals a small chest with four more tiny drawers............................

This chest can be removed by releasing a secret mechanism once the bottom drawer is removed. This enables the small chest to be pulled out.   

Hmmmm what next??    With the chest removed, we now have access to a secret treasure box hidden behind the left hand set of three small drawers.  To remove it, requires more secret mechanisms, the top set of the three centre drawers to be pulled out, and the secret central stationary holder to be in the down position!!    Yes .............................. there are instructions with it!!!

The small chest removed, and the open secret treasure box behind.

The chair
Having made the desk I decided that using it with one of our kitchen, or dinning chairs didn't really work!! So, I decided to make a chair to match the desk. It got my inspiration from some of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's designs.

To match the  desk I decided to make it from Jarrah.  It is a very simple upright design, more of a stool with a low back. You tend to sit forward when writing, so I dispensed with any fancy ergonomics to give it a comfortable back, other than a bit of padding on the back rail.

The height of back is positioned so that when the chair is in front of the desk it lines up with the desks top surface, without masking any of it. 

Having said it is a simple design, it is enhanced to match the desk with similar maple stringing, Vavona inlays, black corners and bandings., and some shell inlays on the tops of the legs!

Wow - that's it!!

It was a great project, which really boosted my confidence in tackling such a complex project in my small workshop space.  I've never looked back.  I now usually, only make things that are a challenge to design and to make.  The more complicated the better!!!

Hope you enjoyed looking.  Please ask if you have any questions.