The Czech Optima Typewriter, a Consul in Disguise

Patrick White's Optima at the New South Wales State Library. I think one can make out the name "Optima" fairly clearly. White (1912-1990) won the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Below, the Optima-Consul on White's desk

Patrick White's desk was built in 1947 by cabinet-maker Kenneth John Jackson of Jim Jackson and Sons, 45 Victoria Road, Parramatta, Sydney. Jackson followed the design of the desk from a Francis Bacon sketch which White supplied.

Francis Bacon, left, with William S. Burroughs

Burroughs with a Hermes Baby and Bacon sketches,

 but no Bacon desk

"When White set up flat in London in 1938, he had a friend, the then little-known painter Francis Bacon, design a desk that was the last gasp in modernity - sleek, long lines ... When [White] and Mr Lascaris moved back to Australia ... he left the desk behind"

So White got Jackson to make him another one.

A "blue" at the Mitchell Library