AROUND HOME : A Modern Cubbyhole Desk

IS IT AN armoire? A bar? No, it’s the 6-foot-tall Personal Desk Station made by the Connecticut-based company, Cadsana.

The Desk Station was designed for executives who dislike both the kit-of-parts look of office-systems furniture, with its snap-together work surfaces, and the traditional executive-office setup where the desk and credenza offer limited storage space. In creating the Desk Station, designer Frances Halsband asked and answered herself: “What would executives treat themselves to if they worked at home? A beautiful antique desk with lots of little drawers and cubbyholes and places to put things.”

Halsband cites as her inspiration the Wooton desk commissioned by financier Jay Gould in 1874. The right-hand door’s inner side put 40 pigeonhole drawers at the financier’s fingertips. He could drop messages through a mail slot on the left-hand door’s outer surface when he closed the desk to go to lunch or acquire a new railroad.

The Wooton’s closest parallel in contemporary life is the double-door refrigerator, which opens to reveal tightly packed food and gadgetry. Indeed, Halsband likens the cozy, leather-lined, door-mounted pocket of her Desk Station to the butter compartment in a refrigerator. Shelves, dividers, drawers and file racks also are available. Wires emanating from a personal computer, usually a spaghetti-like tangle, can be inconspicuously threaded through rubber grommets at the desk surface’s rear. “I don’t like putting files in my desk because I forget about them,” Halsband says. “But at the Desk Station, when the phone rings, I can instantly find the Jones file from among the 26 different projects I’m working on.”

The Cadsana Personal Desk Station is available in a variety of options from Furniture Consultants Inc., 716 S. Olive St . , Los Angeles 90014 (213) 489-4228.