If I could justify spending $5,200 on a desk, I would spend it on this gorgeous Czech midcentury desk from Prague Kolektive, a Brooklyn design shop that describes itself as “the only enterprise in North America specializing in original Czech furniture, lighting, and decorative objects. Our pieces represent the designs of the pre-war Czech avant-garde and mid-century social realism.”

About the desk: trapezoid-shaped top in robin’s-egg blue laminate; cherry, beech, and mahogany construction, recessed black plastic drawer-pulls; black-enameled metal body, key-hole on side of pedestal; manufactured circa 1958; one scratch on desk-top otherwise in excellent condition (item ID# T83)

Some of my favorite books have come out of the Czech Republic–The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, To Begin Where I Am and The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz. Maybe all that stately and serendipitous prose grew out of oppression, fear, passion, and purpose…or maybe the Czech writers and thinkers were inspired by their incredibly stylish yet functional desks.

For now, I’ll keep writing in bed, or on the big, beautiful wooden table my brother-in-law stole from the UCLA Library sometime in the 80s.

Where do you write?