Featured Davenport. Comments invited about how to use? Also key?

Hi everyone I got this Davenport desk I was interested to hear peoples thoughts it's a veneer.
I noticed that some of the drawer knobs are different although they are still old timber ones so I think overtime some were broken.
Each drawer has a lock but I don't have a key and the main desk cavity I don't have a key for that either so because this is quite light I'm hoping to take this to a locksmith onsite shop and see if they can play around with some keys.
I managed to glue the bracket on the right hand side back up.

Where do people find homes in their house for these? They seem to come up quite often and I suspect they are the sort of things that people buy because they look cute but then they tend to sell them because they can't find a place for them and they are too small to really use as a desk easily. Does anyone have any good ideas about how to work these into the home environment? The other challenge is you can't put a nice vase or statuette or something on them due to the slope so they are a little bit difficult to display.
Any ideas?

 

Many of these were used by women in their boudoir for their correspondence. They were functional back then and allowed for their things to be private from servants I imagine. Any sloped desk stopped selling around here years ago . I finally almost gave away a very nice one at my garage sale. Yours has handy drawers on the side so might be used in a hallway/entry way. I use to loan out by huge collection of keys to people to take and find keys that fit . It probably had only one key so if you take drawer that would be all you would need.

 

It would be a good desk for a laptop or tablet

 

Functional ? Beautiful.

 

Yeah I agree it's kind of a hallway or entryway thing the only problem is it sticks out quite a bit. It's quite deep

 

Gato-It's a stunner.But,You sound like you may be having a tad of buyer's remorse,re size & practicality w/ your davenport.I felt the same way for months after we bought our first house ! BUT,the piece is absolutely stunning,and I'm sure someone else down the line would love it.Live with it for a while and see if it finds a place.
PS-I get the same feeling everytime i pay $50 & find it on Ebay for $10 !

 

Actually even though I might have given that impression I don't have any buyers remorse about this one I think it's really good.
I paid $230 Australian for it which is pretty good in my opinion. You can convert that to whatever your currency is..
It's just at the moment I'm living in a small apartment so it's hard to find a spot for it if I was living in my house which was bigger but that's in another city there are a few looks I could find for it.
I don't know that many people who are interested in antique so when I get a new antique I like to put it on here and learn some history and information.

But as you point out the good thing with antiques is when you find something better in the future that you prefer you can always sell what you bought for the same price or more unless you overpaid massively. That's what I really like about antiques it's actually a hobby where you don't necessarily lose money you can buy things and then sell them later and usually can make a profit.

 

They seem to go online for $400 US to 4K US,so that was an excellent deal (of course in the most rural/lower income perhaps lower). Was it a Garage Sale/Flea Mkt find ?
Hope You can move back into yr house soon & fully enjoy yr beautiful goodies !

 

I bought it at an auction in Sydney that I participated in through invaluable.
Sometimes you just get lucky on the day and it also depends on the contents of the rest of the auction for example if you have an auction that has a lot of junkey stuff and then some nice things you can often get the nice things for cheaper but the auctions that are a clearance of some beautiful estate home or something everything seems to go very high.
I have seen a very similar model of the devonport almost exactly the same with veneer at some antique shop online here in Australia for $4000 but I doubt they will ever get that.
Having said that the location of selling the antiques can really dictate the price. For example I have a parian bust of Thomas Moore by Robinson and leadbeater that some people on here helped me identify. From my research at their absolute most that might be worth $1,000 Australian. However the same bust exactly is for sale in Manhattan at a very high class antique shop for 7 1/2 thousand US dollars. And someone in Manhattan would probably have no problem paying that.

I think the reason why I got a good deal on this one is because the side bracket appeared to be broken but I could see it just needed a glue but for some people that's enough to put them off and the other thing is that it has no key so whilst the side drawers have locks luckily they are unlocked but the main cabinet on the slope that is locked shut.
So that may have also put people off.

 

an easy fix....and who knows what gold and jewels may lay inside !!!!!!!!

 

Yeah I'm hoping it has some surprise not just telephone bills

 

I love Invaluable,but much of what I want is in Europe-prices can range frm reasonable to absolutely cheap,but handling & shipping sink that !

 

Yeah. I'm in Australia. We don't have many antiques and they sell for big money.
Then I look at Europe and see plenty of paintings that are 500 years old. If postage wasn't so high could actually make good money importing antiques to Australia.

I really like antique spelter statues I think they are cute and of course they are much more affordable than a genuine antique bronze. Here in Australia even broken one's sell for good money and then when I looked on eBay and see people in the UK selling nicer ones in better condition that are older for less money but when I enquired about postage it was going to cost the same as the statue to send it

 

@Gatoblanconz , that is very attractive. If you do get it open, update this discussion thread to let us know what was inside, if anything. I love a mystery.

 

Thanks I am trying to find an affordable locksmith I can take it to who can try different keys. The key may have been lost not that long in the past, and I dont actually use this as a desk, so dont want to spend too much getting it open.

 

Good idea-Don't want to force something that lovely.

 

Nice Davenport desk. My husband is a locksmith. We make keys for antique furniture all the time but we're on Cape Cod. Probably not helpful!