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The Wooton desk is a variation of the fall front desk. It is the embodiment (in the field of desk design and construction) of the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption which swept over moneyed society in the United States at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and was described by Thorstein Veblen in his book ''The Theory of the Leisure Class''. ==History== An Indianapolis, Indiana, entrepreneur (who was later to become a Protestant preacher) called William S. Wooton obtained patents for his design and established a company in 1870. Production continued until about 1884. The Wooton desk is their better known secretary desk; the Wooton desk company also produced a so-called rotary desk, which is in fact a pedestal desk whose pedestals have segments which turn on themselves to expose more drawers and nooks. The Wooton desk was introduced at the end of the 19th century, at a time when office work was changing in a drastic fashion with an increase in paperwork that led to the introduction of filing cabinets, among other things. The white-collar worker invaded the office in huge numbers. The new reservoir based fountain pen and the typewriter were used to produce greater quantities of office documents than ever before. In this context desks which required users to fold and title each letter or document and place it in a pigeon hole, or small nook, were simply not efficient. It was faster to place an unfolded piece of paper in a folder and place the folder in a file cabinet or file drawer. In a sense, the Wooton desk was obsolete just as it was born and its biggest selling point was probably snob appeal in owning a complex desk with so many divisions and an abundance of ornaments. Wooton desks in good condition are sometimes sold in auctions for the same price as a top of the line luxury automobile. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wooton desk」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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