The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute.

The ship was purchased, fitted out and sent to England, as a gift to Her Majesty Queen Victoria by the President and People of the United States, as a token of goodwill & friendship.

This table was made from her timbers when she was broken up, and is presented by the Queen of Great Britain & Ireland, to the President of the United States, as a memorial of the courtesy and loving kindness which dictated the offer of the gift of the 'Resolute'.

At least one folk ballad was written about the expedition and Charles Dickens published an article in Household Words downplaying scandalous, unfounded reports that were circulating claiming the crew had resorted to cannibalism.

Due to the public desire to know what happened, a five-ship squadron under Sir Edward Belcher set out from Britain in 1852 to search for the missing ships and explorer.

[16] When the ice thawed in the spring, the unmanned Resolute began drifting south, traveling more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) and roughly 7 degrees latitude, where it was spotted in September 1855 in Davis Strait, off the shores of Baffin Island, by the crew of George Henry, an American whaling ship captained by James Buddington.

"[20] Wealthy American philanthropist Henry Grinnell, who had financed an earlier expedition to find Franklin's lost ships to no avail, suggested to the US government that the Resolute should be refit and sent back to England as a token of goodwill.

[16][14][21] Hartstene, a member of the United States Navy during the American Civil War, had previously taken part in the Wilkes Expedition to study the Pacific Northwest, and captained a voyage to the arctic to successfully save Dr. Elisha Kent Kane who had gone missing on his own search for Franklin.

[22][23] After arriving in England the Resolute was later brought to Cowes Harbour on the Isle of Wight where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert boarded the ship and accepted it on behalf of all of Great Britain.

[16] Hartstene, as part of comments about the ship in a speech, expressed his hope "that long after every timber in her sturdy frame shall have perished, the remembrance of the old Resolute will be cherished.

[16][4] On June 11, 1879, the British Admiralty launched a competition to design a piece of furniture made from the timbers of the Resolute which Queen Victoria could gift to the American president.

[28][29] According to Kelly's London Post Office Directory of 1871, Morant, Boyd, & Blanford were "interior decorators, painters, upholsterers, estate and housing managers, carvers, gilders and cabinet makers.

"[30] The company was founded by George Morant and had supplied work for Thomas Lawrence, Robert Peel, and the Dukes of Sussex, Cambridge, and Sutherland.

[31] Morant, Boyd, & Blanford had sent in multiple design drawings for the competition late in 1879 for various furniture pieces that could be constructed, including a large combination bookcase and chimneypiece.

Niches on either side of the central columns held busts of Edward Belcher and Henry Grinnell, and directly about the fireplace a carving of a personified "America" hands "Britannia" the ship Resolute.

[35][12] These portraits were paired with side panels displaying scenes of the arctic and British and American flags along with other highly ornate details and a Moroccan leather top.

[37] On August 26, 1880, Victor Drummond, the British ambassador to Washington, wrote a letter to William M. Evarts, Secretary of State for the US, informing him of Queen Victoria's upcoming gift of the new writing table as well as its history.

[2] The December 11, 1880, issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper praised the desk's beauty (albeit with the previous design pictured) and declared how it represented a major step forward in United Kingdom–United States relations.

The move out began on November 9, when the president left for a trip to Key West, with staff being given only two weeks to completely empty the building of furnishings.

Charles T. Haight, who ran the interior design department at Altman, charged the government only the at-cost rate for storage, $85 a month (equivalent to $4,819 in 2023).

[50] Charles T. Haight was awarded for storing the furnishings at such a low cost by being invited to do the interior design for the newly constructed White House rooms.

[50][51] On June 19, 1951, Haight presented a color drawing of his design for the old kitchen, later known as the Broadcast Room and now the Office of the Curator, to Congress's Commission on Renovation of the Executive Mansion.

She was disappointed by the interior design of the White House when she moved in, stating that it "looked like it's been furnished by discount stores", and called it "that dreary Maison Blanche.

She discovered that four Cézanne paintings originally intended for the White House were instead on display in the National Gallery of Art; she found 100-year-old busts in a downstairs men's bathroom; and after moving aside electrical equipment in the Broadcast Room, she uncovered the Resolute desk.

"[54] It was moved into the Oval Office and, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the desk "gained national prominence when President Kennedy's son, John, was photographed crawling through its trap door.

[63][64] Ketchum describes that when the desk returned from this world tour it was considerably damaged "mainly because of the way the exhibit was handled and the shipping problems which they obviously encountered.

[24] According to letters listed in Volume 40 of the Parliamentary Papers, two "memorial tables" made out of timbers from the Resolute were announced as "recently manufactured" by Robert Hall to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury on November 18, 1880.

Four days later, on November 22, a second letter described how the Queen has "expressed a desire to have a table manufactured out of the same timbers" and that it was subsequently made by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford for a cost of 62 pounds (equivalent to £7,800 in 2023).

"[82] While Parliamentary papers list expenditures for only three tables,[8] Captain Michael Taylor, a docent at the New Bedford Whaling Museum who focuses his studies on the Grinnell desk, stated in a lecture that "it is believed a fourth may also have been made".

These include the New-York Historical Society's recreation of Reagan's Oval Office in New York City,[98] The Presidents Hall of Fame in Clermont, Florida,[99] the Treehouse Children's Museum in Ogden, Utah,[100] the Star Spangled Center at The Magic House in Kirkwood, Missouri,[101] the American Village Citizenship Trust in Montevallo, Alabama,[102] and the George and Barbara Bush Center at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine.