Sligh-Lowry Chinoiserie Kneehole Desk, Ebonized with Tooled Red Leather, Hand-Painted Panels, c. 1945–1960

The Piece

An executive kneehole desk in ebonized hardwood, finished on every side and built to stand in the middle of a room rather than against a wall. Three panels of oxblood leather, tooled in gilt, sit flush in the top above a carved Greek key frieze that runs the full width of the case. Hand-painted chinoiserie unfolds across both pedestals, both flanks, and the reverse — a robed figure beneath flowering prunus, a mountain landscape trailing willow, a single terracotta dragonfly caught mid-flight. The back is fitted with two decorated cabinet doors flanking open shelving, so the piece reads as finished from whichever side faces the room. Original cast brass ring pulls on lotus backplates throughout, carved lambrequin plinth, applied rosette paterae at every panel corner.

History & Provenance

Sligh is one of the older names in American cabinetmaking, and one of the few that died and came back. Charles R. Sligh founded the original Sligh Furniture Co. in Grand Rapids in 1880; the firm supplied bedroom suites to Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison before the Depression forced liquidation of its assets in 1932. The following year Charles R. Sligh Jr. and the company's former superintendent, O.W. Lowry, pooled their money to buy an idle furniture factory in Holland, Michigan and begin again. A Zeeland plant purchased in 1940 gave the partnership its name, and the firm built desks and executive furniture at both plants until 1968, when Sligh bought out Lowry's shares and the name reverted to Sligh Furniture Co.

That 1940–1968 window dates this desk precisely — a piece from the house that made its reputation on exactly this form. Chinoiserie desks were a production line rather than a bespoke commission, and examples surface periodically. What distinguishes this one is survival and configuration: the fully decorated reverse with fitted cabinet doors, the polychrome and gilt panels still legible where they are usually the first thing lost, and complete original hardware with no replacements.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A desk finished on all four sides changes what a room can do — float it in a library or study with the shelved reverse facing out, and it works as furniture from every angle rather than a back turned to the room. The oxblood leather and gilt tooling read warm against deep green, black, or oxblood walls; the chinoiserie rewards close looking without demanding it from across the room. It has the scale and gravity of an executive piece and the hand-painted detail of something far more decorative, which is an unusual combination and the reason these are collected. Equally at home as a reception or concierge desk where period authority is the point.