The pyramidal-sloped bookshelf, with its Roman trusses and Egyptain reeding, relects the antique fashion promoted by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1807. It is likely to have been introduced to Castle Howard, Yorkshire by the Connoisseur Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (d. 1825). He employed the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham (d. 1842) at Castle Howard in 1805 and their scheme for the Sculpture Gallery was later published by Tatham in 1811. His brother Thomas Tatham formed part of the important Mount Street cabinet-making firm of Tatham Bailey and Saunders, which was then employed in the furnishings of George, Prince Regent's Carlton House palace, so there is a possiblilty that this bookcase was also supplied by the firm. Being fitted with castors, it corresponds to the fashionable 'moving bookcase', for which Thomas Sheraton published a pattern in The Appendix to the Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1802, pl. 23.