The antiquarian marble-topped cabinet, embellished with antique Florentine pietra dura plaques in ripple-moulded ebony frames and veneered in golden marble-figured walnut, is conceived in the George IV 'Louis Quatorze' manner. The marble plaques of birds, butterflies, insects and slugs amongst a basket and branches of fruit, posies and flower stems, derive from a Florentine cabinet executed in the Grand Ducal workshops in the 17th Century (A. M. Giusti, Pietre Dure, London, 1992, pl. 37). In England, William Beckford (d. 1844) was among the foremost 19th Century connoisseurs with a taste for marble mosaic furniture and assembled a fabulous collection at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire. Such furniture was executed by the London cabinet-maker Robert Hume, who is credited with a related ebony-veneered cabinet acquired from George Watson Taylor's collection at Erlestocke, Wiltshire in the 1820s by George IV. The King also commissioned a monumental bath-cabinet 'mounted with old Florentine tablets', executed in 1827 by Morel and Seddon for Windsor Castle (C. Fox, London-World City 1800-1840, London, 1992, no. 300 and p. 399 and G. de Bellaigue, 'George IV and the Furnishing of Windsor Castle', Furniture History, 1972, p. 32, pl. 22B).