The School Desk Tales

As soon as we laid eyes on this school desk in a charity shop over in Gilesgate, Durham, both Graeme and I knew we had to take it home. It was tired, it was tatty, it was unstable, and missing a few bits, but we could see beyond this and knew that with a bit of love, it would be as good as new once again.

We don’t know much about the history of this desk given that we found it in a charity shop, but we do know that it looks to have been handmade using repurposed materials! We had absolutely no idea when we first saw it. It wasn’t until it was turned on its side to assess the repairs needed that we spotted the Ryvita branding across the underside wood. It filled me with such joy to find that this desk appears to have been made from repurposed Ryvita transporting boxes! The logo and their rather outdated “makes you fit and keeps you slim” slogan from the 1930’s-1950’s on the bottom have been left untouched so wherever this lovely desk ends up, there will always be a reminder of where it started.

Although we cannot be certain of the exact time this desk was made, we do know that these boxes were pretty much discontinued by the 1960’s-70’s, so it’s quite likely to have been made around the middle of the 20^th century, so at least 50 years old. I have reached out to Ryvita, in the hopes of finding more specific information about this, which I’ll be sure to add into this blog if I learn any more.

The underside of the desk lid, which I’m sure will come as no surprise to many of you, had remnants of stickers, and what I’m hoping was some very old blue tack, along with Jane and either T. or J. Walling etched into the wood. So although we don’t know who the previous owners are, we do know that at some point, a Jane with a passion for doodling used this desk!

To bring it back into a useable state, we’ve refurbished the desk, replacing missing bits of wood, re-stabilising with extra nails and then of course we’ve taken to it with the beautiful mustard yellow you can see in the photos. We have distressed and coated it with dark wax in a nod to its vintage look and added a lovely decoupage transfer detail to enhance it’s look.