This wardrobe pattern, with Grecian-scrolled feet, is published in Messrs. A. Hepplewhite and Co.'s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788 (pl. 87). Veneered in superb feathered mahogany, the wardrobe is embellished after the French antique manner with brass-escutcheon plates celebrating Venus's triumph. Appropriate to a bedroom apartment, the love deity's dolphin-drawn shells are wreathed by flowered 'boulle' brass frets and Etruscan-black ribbon tablets. This fashion was popularised around 1800 by firms such as George Oakley and Thomas Shackleton of St. Paul's Churchyard and Old Bond Street, who in 1799 advertised 'a great variety of new and superb Chintz, Arabesque and Etruscan patterns from the Antique' (see The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp. 658-660 and C. Gilbert, 'Seddon, Sons & Shackleton, Furniture History, 1997, pp. 1-29).
Eared tablets accompanying scrolled aprons featured in bedroom furniture patterns in Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793 (pls. 23 and 42).