The desks we see in medieval woodcuts and other illustrations of the period were massive affairs, but they seemed to be capable of haulage by several men or of being made of pieces that could be knocked down for transport.
Elizabeth Pepper DaCosta was the author/editor/publisher/designer of eleven books, many illustrated by medieval woodcuts:
"On Mortality," subtitled in the original "Theme for a Shrovetide Sermon," is a remarkable prose counterpart to one of those medieval woodcuts depicting the deadly sin of gluttony.
In a medieval woodcut, a wistful Eve averts her eyes from the scene.
Her fiction is reminiscent of medieval woodcuts - their spare, authoritative line deployed to render some grisly scene (martyrs burning at the stake, victims felled by a plague) with antic, animated high spirits.
Shy and diminutive, he lives in a tumbledown country house, doesn't believe in telephones and makes grappa in a setting that looks like a medieval woodcut.
As in Lovecraft's Innsmouth, the residents of Goatswood have a distinctive, offputting appearance; a typical resident is described as "revoltingly goatlike", resembling "a medieval woodcut of a satyr", and clad in "grotesquely voluminous" garments.
These range from medieval woodcuts to contemporary works of fiction.
And there was a jolly innkeeper, Silas Dingwall, who seemed straight out of a medieval woodcut.
His bold, convoluted compositions call to mind a range of associations from medieval woodcuts to German Expressionism, from Art Nouveau to Pop (Johnson).