This exceptionally fine example of a lady's bureau/work-table, with baize-lined writing-slide and tray-top for poetry books, relates to the 'sheveret' or 'cheveret' featured in the 1790 Estimate Sketch-Book of Gillows of London and Lancaster.

Celebrating 'love's triumph', it is elegantly inlaid with palm-flowers and arabesque-scrolled Roman foliage, while the palm-framed medallions display Venus's shell badge. The fashion for such conch-shell ornament, after the Roman manner, derives from G. B. Piranesi's illustrations of the Gualtieri collection of shells in Diverse Maniere d'adornare I cammini, 1769 ('Apologia', pls.20 and 22).