Rosewood Mid-Century Desk. Any Thoughts on who made this?  

I've seen it as Arne Vodder. I don't know if that's accurate or not.

I very, very strong doubt it is an Arne Vodder. I can tell you that the initials of the company that made it were MV, and it was model number 9. It was also offered for sale in the early 1960s. It is not a very commonly found design, so it may not have been offered for sale for very long, but this is speculation.

I know this sounds cryptic, and like I know more than this, but I don't. In my Excellent Furniture Company catalogs the desk is present, and it shows the maker's initials (or some logical shorthand thereof, like F for France and S

The only entry I have on my all time DFMC members list that would fit the MV is M

Never heard of that company. Does it actually have an accent over the E? Or is that francophone autocrroect at work?

M

On a tangent, some observations on odd Excellent nomenclature:

- coincidentally to this conversation, the only pieces in the catalog without the initial acronyms are the Ella and Ellen chairs (which use their names instead), and just so happen to be designed by Arne Vodder and made by Vamo.

- J.L. Moller got stuck with a "V" somehow, even though "JM", and certainly "JLM", seem to have been available. And Excellent carried a lot of Moller designs.

No no, there is an accent originally. At least on the list I have.

It is actually "Vamo, M

If anyone speaks Danish, there might be a makers mark on this one, and you could ask them.

https://www.everclassic.com/da/oevrige-moebler/produkt/skrivebord/48695

I can provide a few answers to these questions. The Ellen and Ella chairs were referred to by these names in other catalogs. I am not actually sure they do have model numbers. They may just have those names. As such they tend to be special cases. In the Excellent Furniture catalogs, the abbreviations do not follow some abstract protocol. They are more of some person's first thought of a good, unambiguous code that will allow customers and sales people to easily fill out the order forms.

The "V" denoted models are one big exception. I do not think that the V is a reference to a company. I think it is the remnant of nomenclature from earlier catalogs were other companies's product was marked with a V and Aasbjerg's was EX. The catalog would have been smaller then, and M

. . . but there are other manufacturers in the Excellent catalog that were given an "M" in their acronym for "mobelfabrik", including:

NM - Naestved Mobelfabrik

BM - Brande Mobelfabrik

What I thought was odd about the Ella/Ellen chairs was not that the names were used instead of model numbers, but that there was no prefix in front of them for the manufacturer. Every other piece in the catalog has as manufacturer prefix in front of the model number/name.

But as I said before, I wasn't drawing a conclusion that Vamo made the desk, just making observations.

Maybe I overstate the case that the M is not likely to stand for M

Thanks for all the input on this desk. I found 2 different stores that had this exact same desk done in teak instead of rosewood. They both had this desk listed as Arne Vodder but I have my doubts that these were listed correctly although I'm not 100% sure. I've posted the links to these desks below. .

http://www.machine-age.com/our-collection/sold/teak-desk-by-arne-vodder/

http://bleufurniture.com/desks-product2189.html

Lauritz had a few of them:

http://www.lauritz.com/sv/auktion/skrivebord-af-teak-med-kehlet-kant/i38...

http://www.lauritz.com/sv/auktion/dansk-moebelarkitekt-fritstaaende-skri...

http://www.lauritz.com/sv/auktion/arne-vodder-fritstaaende-skrivebord-af...

It is annoying that none of them is marked...

Interesting. You can see in those photos that the drawers do not slide on dados along the sides, in the normal Danish way of doing drawers. Each drawer is individually boxed out bind the drawer front, and they slide on their bottoms.

This might be different than the Danish norm because of needed structure in the drawer cases for the legs.

Arne Vodder designed similar recessed pulls for Sibast, obviously, but the construction of the drawer front in this desk is preferable in my opinion. If you study a Sibast drawer front it is a sandwhich from front to rear of teak veneer, mahogany, teak veneer, teak veneer, pine, teak veneer. The recessed pull is routed into the first mahogany half. The corners are also very exposed and prone to breaking off. This desks drawer front, by contrast is a sandwhich of solid rosewood, then rosewood and pine/ramin/light wood. And the recessed pull does not extend to the very corner of the drawer, so the corners are not fragile and prone to breaking off.

I find it extremely unlikely Arne Vodder ever had anything to do with designing this desk.

The fact that this many of these desks can be found and not one is marked with a DFC mark is confirmation that the company was not part of the Danish Furniture Control club. Also the company just didn't care to mark their pieces.

I would say the odds are high that this is a small company nobody has ever heard of.