1880s Desk Accessories

Enjoy this unique Victorian artifact made by renowned American Silversmith, Gorham, Providence, Rhode Island circa 1889. This inkwell is artfully created of fluted cut glass and acce...

This incredible basin was inspired by the twin fountains of Piazza Farnese, in Rome ( Roman basins of Egyptian granite ) It was made by excavating a ...

A desk accessory from America's gilded age featuring —naturally— gilded bronze, a kingfisher, a snail, a conch shell, and a handy candle holder. If you're like me —and I sincerely hope you're not— you have been stark raving obsessed with America's gilded age since you were seven or eight. You've read every biography ever written about the Vanderbilt family, Edith Wharton is your favorite author, and you feel in your heart that The Breakers mansion in Newport Rhode Island should be decommissioned as a museum and you should be allowed to live in it. The Breakers is the most impressive of the Newport "summer cottages." It was built in the early 1890s by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built the original Vanderbilt fortune. Breakers is a seventy-room cottage of nearly 170,000 square feet. Its bathrooms had hot and cold running seawater and the cottage featured wall-to-wall opulence throughout. Google "Breakers Mansion" right this moment and visit the Wikipedia page. Toward the bottom of the page on the right is a photograph of the library. Click on that image to make it full-sized. Wouldn't this desk accessory look perfect on the little table in front of the green silk sofa...

Victorian Garnet Hair Pick (or possibly bookmark) from the late 19th Century. A deep tortoiseshell pick is mounted with rose cut garnets in a crescent moon...

A Guilloché (in English usually "Guilloche") is an engraving technique in which a very precise, intricate pattern is mechannically etched in an underlying material with very fine det...

Shakudo is the use of mixed metal alloys and was originally used in Japanese armor and swords. Artisans would sometimes remove the Shakudo plaques from the armor and incorporate it i...