Of Furniture and Fashion

What we are looking at is the keyhole of a secrétaire à abattant, or a drop-front secretary in English: let us open it for you, so that this beautiful piece of furniture may tell you its story.

If you look at Fig. 1, you can see how the lock mechanism of fall-front secretaries was used to conceal compartments: in fact, once the key was inserted and turned, the top half of the secretary would drop, creating a desk surface on hinges and revealing the internal compartments; hence the name “fall-front secretary”. (Fig. 1).

Secretaries such as this one were placed in rooms of well-to-do households, and were used to keep papers, books, and small objects.

While the dropping desk was a useful and practical feature, the lock and the hidden compartments in this type of furniture were probably the most appreciated characteristic. As we will see in the next step, Marie Antoniette, the Queen of France, owned a drop-front secretary herself, and it is said that she often appreciated the privacy that this piece of furniture offered in the deceitful environment of the court, and used it to keep private correspondence and small, valuable objects safe and hidden.