Cherry Writing Desk for Brynn

Custom wood drawer pull - writing desk - Custom Hardware

curved accent panel for custom writing desk

Drawers for custom made writing desk - Custom Furniture Denver

Cherry Writing Desk handmade by Brian Benham - Custom Furniture

This cherry writing desk features some beautifully colored, rich-grain American Cherry. The drawer pulls are ambrosia maple, set into walnut posts.

Sizes are approximate and can be customized to fit many situations

30″ tall

46″ wide

28″ deep

Origin of This Piece

The first iteration of this cherry writing desk was for my daughter Brynn as she needed a place to do her homework. It’s interesting to look back at writing desk styles. We went from something that had a large drawer to store a typewriter to a desk with open spaces or shelves to store a PC computer tower on. But now we don’t need either a large drawer or shelf as my kids’ generation uses I-pads and tables that can easily slide into a small shallow drawer.

Not having this design constraint of storing large objects opens up more possibilities for designing the piece’s aesthetics, such as the curve of the legs and having the space to mirror that curve in the accent panel.

I then carried this theme of mirroring design elements and used the same wood as in the accent panel in the drawer pulls. The ambrosia maple has a soft, light brown color to it that blends well with the cherry. I set the drawer pull into walnut posts. Often it can become overwhelming in the visual presentation of a design to use a third type of wood. However, since the ambrosia maple and cherry blended well together, I couldn’t really say that the maple was a contrasting accent color but more of a complementary wood. So to bring your eye down to the drawers, I decided to use walnut to separate the maple from the cherry. The walnut stands out nicely against the drawer fronts.

For the part of the drawer pulls you grab onto, I deviated from a standard James Krenove straight-dowel drawer pull. I turned the maple on the lathe, creating a slight bulge in the dowel’s center. This created another level of detail and sophistication that only the user would notice as they opened the drawer.

I dug through the entire stack of wood at the lumber yard for the drawer fronts to find a board with a beautiful grain pattern. When laying out the front apron, I carefully kept all the parts in order so the grain flowed from one drawer front to the next. These design details may be lost for the uninitiated, but for those who appreciate the attention to detail, this is what sets this piece apart.