NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Wilner & Company announces the completion of their fifth hand-carved replica of the Resolute Desk, the elaborately carved oak desk used in the Oval Office. The Resolute desk is a large, nineteenth-century partners' desk often chosen by presidents of the United States for use in the White House as the Oval Office desk. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the timbers of the British Arctic Exploration ship HMS Resolute.

The Resolute was a British Arctic Exploration ship that set sail in April 1852 to search for the missing British explorer Sir John Franklin, who left Britain in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. The Resolute became trapped in the Arctic ice in 1853. In 1855 an American whaling ship found HMS Resolute adrift and sailed it back to New London, Connecticut. HMS Resolute was completely refitted and sent back to Britain in 1856 as a gesture of goodwill and friendship. When HMS Resolute was decommissioned in 1879, Queen Victoria had the desk made from the wood of the ship and gifted it to President Hayes. Many presidents since Hayes have used the desk at various locations in the White House, but it was Jackie Kennedy who first brought the desk into the Oval Office in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy.

This is the fifth replica of the Resolute Desk created by Eli Wilner & Company. Wilner's first Resolute Desk replica was completed in 2010, after a year of hand carving and finishing. That desk is now on display as part of the recreation of the Oval Office in the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.

Eli Wilner has completed over 15,000 framing projects for private collectors as well as more than 100 institutions. The Wilner gallery is held in high regard by both institutions and private collectors for their expertise, extensive inventory, and superior quality of craftsmanship. This regard and confidence is evidenced by clients such as The White House, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Yale University Art Gallery and many private individuals. In 2019, Eli Wilner & Company was honored by the Historic Charleston Foundation with the Samuel Gaillard Stoney Conservation Craftsmanship Award, for their work in historic picture frame conservation.