What I noticed immediately was how high poly your assets are. It's more in line with models for animation than real-time. The candles are (while slightly higher poly than I would do) a pretty good polycount. Not many wasted triangles and a good edge flow. The inkpot, pen, and the books on the other hand are very very high…
I think you have a good start! My recommendation moving forward would be to focus on creating less-generic props. Things like desks and books look nice, but they have been done many times before. I would think about creating your own items - things that don't even exist in the real world! (There's tons of fun hard-surface…