This elegant table displays a French-fashioned trompe l'oeil inlaid vignette of lady's pursuits, that is framed by a golden and Etruscan-black ribbon and comprises a novel and embroiderer's equipment laid down beside a convulvulus sprig. The scissors and embroidery-pouch are ribbon-tied for hanging from an arm. The table's slender columnar frame relates to the fashionable 'spider-leg' Pembroke tables of the 1760s, such as those listed at the Vyne, Hampshire in 1776 (R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p. 553, fig. 19). Amongst the most celebrated London marqueteurs or inlayers at this period was Christopher Furlogh (d. c. 1787) who established his Tottenham Court Road workshops in the late 1760s together with his half-brother Christian Linning, and in the early 1780s was appointed 'Ebeniste' to George, Prince of Wales, later George IV.
The marquetry on this table closely relates to that on a commode supplied to the 1st Earl of Chichester (d. 1805) for Stanmer Park, Sussex (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, p. 127, figs. 119-120).