The rectangular and cut-cornered commode with serpentined legs and bowed apron is drawer-fitted in the type known in France as a commode à l'anglaise. Its form is associated with the work of the Parisian ébéniste Pierre-Antoine Foullet ( maître in 1765) but it relates in particular to two English commodes. One, from Stanmer Park, Sussex, is illustrated in L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, no. 11, p. 129, figs. 124-125. The second is of more closely comparable form and is at Ham House, Surrey.
The Ham commode also features the pair of doors of this type and is likely to have been acquired by Lyonel, 5th Earl of Dysart, (d.1799), as part of the refurbishment carried out following his inheritance of Ham in 1770. Lucy Wood (op. cit., pp. 132-134) discusses the constructional idiosyncracies of these commodes and of the larger group of which they are part. She makes the most tentative associations with the Anglo-Swedish circle that included Christopher Fuhrlohg (d. circa 1790). It does seem likely that this commode was made by a skilled immigrant craftsman whose name at present is elusive. Its restrained elegance may indicate a date in the later 1770s.