The bureau, with its elegant plinth-centred and triumphal-arched cornice, is designed in the George II 'Palladian' manner popularised by the architect James Gibbs' Book of Architecture, 1728. Its cornice, together with the cabinet doors' indent-cornered panels, feature on a cabinet of the period illustrated on Thomas Potter's trade-card, and on a corresponding cabinet with richly engraved mounts displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum (see: C. Gilbert, John Channon, London, 1993, p. 19 and fig. 113). Its serpentined bureau recess, with tabernacle compartments flanked by drawers and pigeon-holes, and its serpentined truss feet, appear on other cabinets attributed to John Channon, cabinet-maker of St. Martin's Lane (ibid., pls. 78 and lv). In addition, its mechanically-sealed tablet lock was another high quality feature adopted by Channon, while the rare form of the cabinet's lock-plates recall those of his signed bookcases at Powderham Castle, Devon, which bear the date 1740 (ibid., fig. xxlll).