REPLICA 'RESOLUTE' OR 'THE PRESIDENT'S DESK', UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

"The President's Desk" United States of America: A large and profusely carved mahogany partners desk with inset gilt tooled red leather top, known as 'The Resolute Desk,' or 'The Hayes Desk', made as an exact replica of the original desk presented by Queen Victoria to the President of the United States of America, Rutherford Hayes "... as a memorial of the courtesy and loving kindness which dictated the offer of the gift of the "Resolute", subsequently used in the White House as the Oval Office desk.

In 1852 H.M.S. Resolute was part of the British Arctic expedition sent in search of Sir John Franklin, and was abandoned in the ice in 1854. It was discovered again in 1855 and broken up, and the original desk was made from the timbers. The 1,300-pound (590-kilogram) desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford.

The Resolute desk was received at the White House on November 23, 1880 and shortly after was moved to the second floor. It stayed in the President's Office and President's Study on the east side of the second floor until the White House Reconstruction 1948 to 1952. Jackie Kennedy rediscovered the desk languishing under electrical equipment and had it brought to the Oval Office in 1961. The desk was removed from the White House after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, when President Lyndon Johnson allowed it to be taken on a traveling exhibition with artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library. President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office in 1977, where it has remained since.

Copies of this desk have been used in many settings including Madame Tussauds and the Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon Presidential Libraries. More recently a similar example was featured in the ABC Drama ‘Designated Survivor’ and the film National Treasure 2: The Book of Secrets with Nicholas Cage.

Provenance: From a private London Collection.

81cm high x 214cm wide x 115cm