The bronzed and gilt sofa table, with heraldic escutcheons in the centre of the flowered frieze, combines antique and antiquarian 'Gothic' elements in the early 19th Century fashion. Its plinth-supported 'triumphal-arch' and trestles with cluster-columned pointed arches derives from a 'Sofa Table' pattern issued in George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture, 1808, pl. 85. The table may have been commissioned by George Temple, 3rd Earl Temple and 1st Marquess of Buckingham (d. 1813). It bears the Temple family crest, a martlet on a ducal coronet.

Related 'Gothic' furniture was executed in ebony for the Marquess' library at Stowe, whose design was inspired in part by Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The library which was designed around 1805-7 by the architect Sir John Soane (d. 1837), was known as the Saxon Room and was intended to house the Saxon manuscripts, which had been bequeathed to the Marquess in 1803 (C. Wilk, Western Furniture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1996, p. 140, fig. 3).