Restoration of The Grande Escritoire of Louis Bonaparte

This incredible desk, which is in the collection of the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Florida, is understood to have been the personal desk of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (1806-1810), and the brother of the Emperor Napoleon.

While residing in the museum, the desk suffered what can only be described as a catastrophic plumbing emergency. A large water pipe in the ceiling above the desk burst, showering the desk with thousands of gallons of water before the flow could be stopped. One museum employee described the scene as "looking like Niagra Falls in the lobby of the museum".

The flowing water dislodged large quantities of plaster from the ceiling which also came cascading down upon the desk. Water filled the desk drawers causing extensive swelling and warping of the wood. And with the drawers of this already fragile masterpiece of furniture swelled shut, the staff had no means of removing the water without causing further destruction of the piece. The Grande Escritoire, with over 35,000 individually shaped pieces of inlaid ivory, ebony, kingswood, satinwood, mother of pearl, and numerous other types of exotic wood, was decimated.

Following the emergency, the museum staff cleaned the surface water and plaster pieces off the exposed surfaces of the desk as best they could, and then set up electric fans to help evaporate the water which remained beneath and within the escritoire itself. The desk was too heavy and too fragile to even slide it across the floor to remove the standing water which lie beneath it. The process of drying took months. The museum began looking for a furniture conservator with the right combination of skills and sensibility to be able to save this important piece of cultural property.

Nearly two years later I inspected the Grande Escritoire for the first time. By then the desk had dried completely but the entire surface of the piece exhibited extreme calcification, and mildew was also a problem. The drawers were still swollen shut and the finish was devastated.

Animal hide glue, which is a type of glue made from the skin and hooves of horses, was the glue of choice for making fine furniture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This type of glue is water soluble. As a result of the extended period of exposure to water, the glue which held the inlaid ivory and ebony and other materials in place on this desk redissolved, and allowed the inlaid pieces to shift from their original positions, or to simply fall off completely. After the glue once again dried, the glue rehardened and set the inlaid pieces firmly back in their places. The wrong places, unfortunately. These dislodged pieces of ebony and ivory etc. added to the already serious problem of the stuck drawers as may be observed in the photographs above to the right, which shows two of the drawers prior to and following conservation.

Each of the approximately thirty-five thousand pieces of inlay was originally hand cut and individually fitted into position among its surrounding pieces to form the overall design. The pieces were assembled and glued to the underlying oak substrate to form the decorative surfaces of the escritoire. Since each piece was individually fitted, each piece is slightly different from the multitude of similarly shaped pieces with which it interacts. Consequently, during conservation, each individual piece of inlay had to be separately numbered and tracked through the cleaning and repair process until it was finally restored to its original position. The photograph at the left is an example of this layout and labeling process.

As may be imagined, water damage of this magnitude adversely affected a great deal more of the escritoire than could be observed on the surface alone. Due to the long term nature of the exposure, all of the joints in the entire piece suffered the same hide glue dissolution problems as the veneer and inlays had experienced. Some areas also experienced dry rot and crumbling. In some instances, pieces of the desk simply gave way, revealing deeper hidden deterioration which would require stabilization and treatment quite separate from the more obvious surface conditions. One example of this is shown in the two photographs on the right.

Another area which suffered extreme deterioration of a slighly different nature was the parquetry platform upon which the rest of the desk rests. The platform itself is built of a heavy structural framework made of oak beams which support a series of horizontal oak boards (Refer to the photograph below). The horizontal oak boards act as a substrate for the visible parquetry floor. The parquetry itself is composed of numerous small pieces of contrasting woods formed into a design which gives the illusion of three dimensionality (Refer to the photograph below). The individual parquetry pieces are approximately 3/8ths of an inch thick and are glued in a solid interlocking layer onto the top of the oak substrate boards.

Standing water seeped down through the parquetry into the cavity between the parquetry and the oak substrate boards. The water was absorbed by the glue and the wood and was trapped there for an extended period of time. The result was shrinkage, warping, and cupping of the substrate boards as well as the eventual destruction of the underside of the parquetry pieces as a result of dry rot.

Consequently, the entire parquetry layer was in danger of collapsing into the deteriorated space between the layers, permanently destroying the entire design. The solution was to carefully\inject an epoxy resin through the parquetry layer and into the void below, filling the porousity in the wood as well as the void below.

Structural framework beneath platform		Parquetry with 3D effect on platform

Many sections of molding (mostly of the cross grain variety) were loosened and warped and had mold growing beneath them (Refer to the photographs below). These moldings were systematicdally removed, repaired as needed, treated for mold, and then resecured back into their original locations.

Area of cross grain molding with mold damage		Detail of mold damage to substrate

Central tambour mechanism prior to conservation

As well as water related damage to the visible areas of the desk many of the most severe problems caused by water involved the hidden interior mechanical portions which consist of fabric backed tambours and sections of wood which were meant to slide within other wooden components. For example, multi slatted tambours are utilized inside the desk to cause the writing surface to work in conjunction with the main barrel roll. When the writing surface is pulled forward from its closed nesting position into the writing position the main barrel roll automatically raises from its closed position to reveal the writing surface itself as well as the main central section of the desk. This is accomplished via a flexible ribbed tambour attached to the rear of the writing surface which runs in a curving channel up the rear of the desk and connects to the top of the barrel roll.

This tambour was originally backed with a multitude of parallel linen threads to hold the staves together while still allowing for flexibility. These threads were later replaced with leather straps. When the leather straps eventually rotted, canvas cloth was glued to the back of the staves as well as the leather. Then, at the time of the accident, water dissolved the glue which held the canvas and the entire affair fell into pieces (See the photograph at right). Two other similar tambours were used elsewhere on the desk to facilite other mechanical operations. All three of the tambours suffered a similar fate to the one shown. The solution was to remove the failed earlier repairs (leather straps, canvas, residue glue, etc.), repair the staves as needed, and back the repaired staves with an appropriate light weight flexible screening material.

In addition to the widespread damage throughout the escritoire resulting from the plumbing incident there were other damaged areas due to inherent vice and earlier incidents of vandalism. Numerous areas of inlay had fallen out and become lost over the years and major damage had occured in the area of the barrel roll from a prior break in. The photographs at the right and below show the front face of one of the candle shelves. These small pull out shelves were used to support candle holders which were used to illuminate the writing surface while working at night. Much of the inlay to the right of the knob hole was missing. Candle shelf during conservation Candle shelf - following conservation As can be seen in the photograph over seventeen separate individually formed pieces of ivory, ebony, and walnut were required to replace the missing pieces. Additionally, several smaller chip losses may be observed from the pieces which were still intact. These small missing chips had to be individually patched with the proper materials. And of course the existing original pieces had to be secured to the substrate before any of these repairs could be executed. The shelf is only about one inch tall.