Old furniture is made to be used and not sitting in the corner.
When Amie and I bought our house recently we threw out all the old cheap junk and have been spending time at estate sales and consignement shops buying high quality well made furniture that we can enjoy. We did have some peices that I had picked up before we meet, that are well made and older that we did keep. Also there was no way I was giving the oil paintings of the outdoors I had when we moved.
Our dinning set is well over 100 years old and the amount of carving on it is sight to see. The inside of the sideboard is made of 100 percent cedar and smells wonderfull every time we open it up to get out a bottle of wine or to get into one of the drawers for pudding mix etc. The table gets used every night as we sit around it and eat and talk about our days or about the next fishing trip etc. We are carefull with the dinning room furniture, in that we clean it and use table mats when eating, but it was not just made for looks. It was and still is a great set of furniture to use. I even got a great deal on it since the style is not in right now since I paid only $1800 for the complete set at a old consignment shop. The family who had owned it had it in their family for over 70 years that they knew of. I guess its just a little to fancy now days for most peoples taste but every one that comes into our house really has loved it. We have slowly filled the house with our finds and its one of our loves outside of fishing.
One day I hope to find a roll up desk or something like that to become my fly tying desk. I would be nice to close the lid and hide my mess from guest and the cat.
I love the desk you have, use it well.