Lot Essay
The cabinet, designed in the late 18th century 'antique' style features a 'commode' base with fluted pilasters, trellised frieze and hollowed corner panels accompanied by a recessed cabinet of bookshelves and drawers of a type named 'sheveret' in Messrs. Gillow's sketch of a work-table in 1790. The 'sheveret' appears on a pattern for a related 'Lady's Secretary' in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, London, 1793-4, pl. 43, and on related cabinets attributed to John McLean (d. 1825) of Marylebone Street. The latter's work was acknowledged by Sheraton in his Cabinet Dictionary, 1803 (see: S. Redburn, 'John McLean and Son', Furniture History, 1978, pp. 31-37)