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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shangas, post: 10343613, member: 360&quot;]They&#039;re called various things. Writing cases, writing boxes, box-desks, travel-desks, lap-desks, writing compendiums...but yes, they were designed to be used while traveling. You&#039;d pack it into your suitcase or your steamer-trunk along with your clothes, your toiletry-case and all the other things you needed, and took it away with you on a trip. </p><p><br /></p><p>Remember, these were made before the days of fountain pens and ballpoints, before typewriters were compact. So if you wanted to write - with ink - you needed to bring a dip-pen, and an inkwell...and you needed spare steel points...you needed writing-paper, envelopes, stamps, seals, sealing-wax, etc. You also needed somewhere to store correspondence and paperwork.</p><p><br /></p><p>You couldn&#039;t put all this into a briefcase - what if the bottles smash and ink goes everywhere? </p><p><br /></p><p>So they had writing cases like these, specially measured and fitted so that the inkwells, which screwed shut for security, wouldn&#039;t rattle around and break, and where everything had its own place for easy organising. </p><p><br /></p><p>A lot of them had elastic banding underneath the writing slope, so that you could slide documents in there for added storage. A lot of these cases had secret compartments. Some are pretty obvious, others were really, really well-hidden. </p><p><br /></p><p>They were mostly made between the late 1600s through to the very early 1900s. By the end of the Edwardian era, they had basically become obsolete. I don&#039;t think I&#039;ve seen anything like these being made past ca. 1910/1920.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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