Rindge artist’s 18th-century inspired desk features intricate hidden mechanisms

For the past decade, Rindge furniture maker Bill Thomas has been working to create an ornate writing desk modeled after an 18th-century piece created for the Russian aristocracy.

It is more than just a desk, however: This piece hides multiple secrets.

“These pieces were originally designed to surprise and delight the aristocracy,” Thomas explained. To that end, they were created with multiple hidden compartments, cleverly worked by mechanisms that are easily missed upon first glance.

The desk is on display at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester as part of its Furniture Masters exhibit. The display includes a video showing the different hidden compartments and how they work.

Last Sunday, Thomas was at the Currier Museum, showing visitors how the desk worked, and answering their questions.

The desk, built by commission request, has been a meticulous decade-long process, Thomas said, and it’s still not finished. He continues to work on what he said will be the most difficult piece of the desk — a writing table and inkwell storage that will pop out and unfold at the turn of a key.

But even unfinished, the desk still holds plenty of things to uncover, with six hidden compartments.

Modeled specifically after the “Apollo desk” created for Catherine the Great of Russia by cabinet maker David Roentgen, and redesigned by Thomas, the piece was originally inspired by Greek temples.

The desk front opens up into a writing surface, covered with intricate wood inlays. Inside the desk, on either side, are compartments with what look like the spines of old books. But pressing a button, disguised as more inlay decoration, causes the books to pop out into hidden drawers.

Another hidden keyhole opens doors on either side of the desk — one of which hides a music box, which, when the key turns, immediately begins playing “Sheep May Safely Graze,” by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Thomas has been making furniture since the 1980s, and said that his niche is usually American-style period furniture. The desk was a departure for him, in more ways than one. Not only was it a European style, but Thomas had to teach himself a lot of the mechanical aspects of creating spring-loaded secret compartments.

“That’s the thing about commissions. You never know what you’re going to be doing next,” Thomas said.

The Apollo desk will be on display at the Currier Museum as part of its “Joined Together: 30 Years of the Furniture Masters” exhibit through Feb. 8.