The chiffonier bookcases, with gilt enrichments and railed marble tops for showing sculpture etc., display frieze tablets striated with horizontal Grecian Doric flutes and lozenged compartments and reflect the French antique fashion popularised by Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet Dictionary, l803 and The Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist's Encyclopaedia, l803-6. The former, included patterns exhibited at the 'Elegant Parisian Furniture Warerooms' in Tottenham Court Road belonging to the firm of John and William McLean. Such striated panels are a particular feature of their work at this period (S. Redburn, 'John McLean and Son', Furniture History, l978, pp. 31-37).
Related bookcases were also introduced at this period to Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire around 1800 by Francis, 5th Duke of Bedford (d. 1802), see R. Houfe, Henry Holland; Woburn Abbey, London 1980, no. 29; and a further related pair was sold from Castle Howard, Yorkshire, Sotheby's house sale, 11 November 1991, lot 138.