Woodworking Wonder Bill Thomas
Arts & Antiques Magazine
Bethany Tarbell

In early 1998, William Thomas got the call he had always dreamed of. He was commissioned to re-create a desk he considers a pinnacle of craftsmanship, one that furniture historian Charles F. Montgomery has called "the most beautiful and successful" of all American desks. "I'd been in love with this desk for years,'' Thomas says. But the dream had an element of nightmare too: The piece, a circa-1790 Maryland Federal cylinder-fall desk and bookcase, posed daunting technical challenges, and Thomas would have a mere 10 weeks to complete the job.

The original desk is in the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. Made of mahogany, satinwood, zebrawood, and holly, with veneering and elaborate inlay, it stands a stately 8 1/2 feet tall including the exuberant carved eagle perched on top. Furniture of this complexity is rarely made today; few craftsmen have the necessary skills -- or the time. The commission to reproduce it could be compared with Allen Breed's copying of the Nicholas Brown desk that sold for $12.1 million at Christie's in 1989.

Cylinder-fail desks were the 18th century precursors to Victorian roll-tops. The greatest challenge of the cylinder-fall is its lid -- when made properly, it should slide back into the desk at the touch of a fingertip. But unlike the lid of a roll-top, it is all one rigid piece, so it's fiendishly difficult to make -- any warps or irregularities could upset the arc and prevent the lid from sliding. Because of this difficulty, only a handful of cylinder-falls were ever made.

A commission of this importance is relatively rare because of the perception, held by many, that the only furniture worth spending real money on is antique. Most craftsmen make do with one big commission a year -- or less. "It's as if people think it all began and ended in the 18th century," says Thomas. He is proof that this old art in America is alive and well. William Thomas is a former college dropout; he didn't start making furniture unt

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