Antiques Roadshow

on to my father and I inherit it when he passed away I believe it's European I don't know the correct name for it I consider it sort of a traveling writers box it is an English box it is what we would call a lap desk or just a folding writing desk it's dated from between 1820 and 1830 this is the reign of George the fourth George the fourth actually had a lot of interest in furniture which had brass inlay on it like this we call this bull market tree and it's all over the top of this box as we can see and on the front as well the wood itself is satin wood so it's a tropical hardwood and is used a lot in these sorts of boxes because it was very highly prized and had a wonderful figure there's a lot more to see inside so we've got a clue here which indicates to us that it is definitely English and that's the lock gr here in the crown patent so that is a period lock for George the fourth you'd have had your pen tray here sadly absent now and a couple of other bits missing we also have this wonderful inlay see how tight this is this is all tropical inlay and this actually would have been done probably in Tunbridge Wells it's known as Tunbridge ware so this could be the original red leather Morocco red Morocco leather guilt tooled writing surface which has been later replaced with this rather dare I say unfortunate green velvet this is not really seen much light so this is pretty much as it would have been at the time we actually see pieces like this on Antiques Roadshow unlocked like these lap disks were really they were producing really really large numbers so because everybody needed them they used them I mean you mentioned that they were like traveling desks but really they mostly did their travelling within the home I mean they were like portable oh okay writing stations if you like we see a lot of these on rocha and most of them are pretty also around this one isn't that this one is a very very high quality one at auction I would estimate it for between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars all right okay thank you very nice