An Arts & Crafts Cotswold School English Oak Bureau by Liberty & Co c. 1920. A very stylish bureau of fairly modest size, so perfect to store correspondence, stationary or office items without taking up too much space and adding in a lovely decorative touch. Featuring:

• Solid English Oak throughout.

• Very well figured quarter-sawn English Oak (quarter-sawing is a way of sawing oak to produce boards with superior strength which also reveals decorative 'medullary rays' in its grain).

• 2 plank cleated fall front enclosing pigeon holes and acting as a writing surface when down.

• Single drawer (made with single plank fronts solid drawer carcasses joined with hand-cut lap and through dovetails and solid bases).

• Handmade wrought copper handles.

• 2 overhanging side shelves and lower galleried shelf.

• Galleried top.

• Heart motifs.

Approximate dimensions are:

• Overall Height 1230mm (4 feet and 1/4 of an inch).

• Overall Width 1000mm (3 feet 3 1/4 inches).

• Overall Depth 430mm (1 foot 4 3/4 inches).

c. 1920.

Drawer has an ivorine Liberty And Co. label (matching figure 8.20, page 301 in 'Liberty's Furniture 1875 - 1915: The Birth of Modern Interior Design' by Daryl Bennett, Antique Collector's Club 2012).

Very good condition with smoothly sliding drawer, tight joints, excellent rich colour and grain and overall very clean. Top lock does not function and filled contraction gap in the fall front. A few other minor marks and dints discoverable upon close inspection, less than expected with an item that has been in use for 90+ years. If you wish to have further specific photographs or talk to us for a more detailed condition report then please do not hesitate to contact us.

A Prestigious Company in the Design and Marketing of Arts and Crafts Furniture. Renowned for its imaginative design, high quality craftsmanship and famous London based retail location, it has produced some of the most desirable furniture of modern times.

The most British of woods, that can produce really special results. English oak has been used for hundreds of years to construct everything from sea-going vessels to fine furniture. Although oak grows widely across Europe and North America, craftsmen continue to cherish English oak which grows more slowly than its foreign counterparts giving it strength, durability. Quarter sawn boards are very straight grained and have distinctive growth rings and medullary rays that give a very beautiful effect as well as being renowned for their superior stability and strength.

The Cotswold School was a development of the Arts and Craft Movement started largely by Ernest Gimson and the brothers Sidney and Ernest Barnsley. The furniture is instantly recognisable with its simple lines, attention to the finest of details, and use of beautiful materials. Cotswold School designs were crafted from local materials using traditional tools and techniques and with decorative details derived largely from utilitarian elements: exposed joinery, unusual panels, interesting pulls and latches crafted either from wood or from metal using traditional smithing techniques, and close attention to form as well as to wood grain and pattern. Where decorative details were added they generally took the form of traditional embellishment such as exposed joints, chamfered edges and chip carved edge details. The style was embraced and developed by other designers and craftsmen including Gordon Russell, Stanley Webb Davies in Cumbria, Sid Barnsley's son Edward, Arthur Romney Green in Hampshire, Robin Nance in St Ives and Ambrose Heal are a handful of such men out of many. The best developed their own style within the established tradition.