French Palisander Desk with Gallery and Leather Top

• Gallery - On furniture, a gallery is a small upright section, frequently pierced and decorated, around the tops of small items of furniture, such as davenports, side tables, and so forth. Galleries are made in brass or bronze,and be fretted, pierced or solid timber. A three-quarter gallery is one that surrounds three of the four sides of a table, desk or other top.
• Turning - Any part of a piece of furniture that has been turned and shaped with chisels on a lathe. Turned sections include legs, columns, feet, finials, pedestals, stretchers, spindles etc. There have been many varieties and fashions over the centuries: baluster, melon, barley-sugar, bobbin, cotton-reel, rope-twist, and so on. Split turning implies a turned section that has been cut in half lengthwise and applied to a cabinet front as a false decorative support.
• Amaranth / Purpleheart / Palisander - Amaranth, also called "purpleheart" and palisander is a hardwood obtained flowering plants in tropical regions of Central and South America, where they grow in rainforests. When the trees are cut, the timber turns from a dark brown to a rich purple colour. It is mainly used for veneering and decorative features on furniture, and is extremely dense when dry.
• Turned Legs - are legs which have been turned on a lathe. In use from the 16th century, turned legs on tables, chairs and cabinets became more frequent until, by the 1830s, the Georgian square or tapered leg was rarely found except in country pieces.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• desks, style or type - French 333