The urn-capped 'Roman' medallion pier-glass is designed in the George III 'antique' or 'Etruscan columbarium' fashion promoted by Robert Adam (d. 1792) court architect to George III, and popularised by Thomas Chippendale Junior's Sketches of Ornament, 1778 (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, figs. 28-33). Its sacred urn emerges from palm-flowered scrolls of Roman foliage, while its laurel festoons also wreath the acanthus-wrapped frame which is enriched with flutes, reed-gadroons and an 'Etruscan' pearl-string. Its various elements are found in a surviving pier-glass design of 1774 in the sketch-book of John Linnell of Berkeley Square (H. Hayward, 'The Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria & Albert Museum', Furniture History, 1969, fig. 95).