One of the most memorable designs produced in America during the Aesthetic movement of the 1870s and 1880s, this desk epitomizes the precepts of the Modern Gothic style espoused by British and American reformers as an antidote to prevailing French taste in interior decoration. As prescribed, the piece is architectonic in character. Mounted on a trestle base with stiff, diagonal front legs and mortise-and-tenon construction, it bears medieval-style ornamentation of shallow incising, nickel-plated hardware, carved linen-fold panels, and chamfered edges. The projecting shelf opens to become the writing surface, which retains its original red baize and gold-stamped red leather trim, and the pitched roof above the projecting central cabinet lifts up to reveal a small storage space. The firm of A. Kimbel and J. Cabus was among the first in America to work extensively in the Modern Gothic mode, introducing the style to Americans at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition with furniture shown in a roomlike setting. The following year this desk design was illustrated in an advertisement depicting the company's showrooms at 7 and 9 East Twentieth Street in New York. The same image documents a hanging key cabinet by the firm, the only known example of which is also in the Museum's collection (acc. no. 1981.211).