This gentleman's writing/reading-table with frieze drawer and circular swivel candle-boards concealed in the sides, has a book-rest on its hinged and ratchet-supported top, such as features on a dressing-table pattern of the 1730's shown in the trade advertisement for ingenious mechanical furniture issued by the cabinet-maker Thomas Potter of High Holborn (see C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760, London, 1993, fig.11). It bears a very close relationship to a brass-inlaid table at the Victorian & Albert Museum, which has been associated with the St. Martin's lane workshops of John Channon (d. c. 1783), and a bureau-cabinet bearing the brand of J. Graveley, who may have acted as a journeyman for various cabinet-makers (see C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, op cit., figs. 81,50 and 51). It is also of interest to note that Potter and his partner John Kelsey allowed Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Barn Elms House, London credit for the return of what must have been a similar 'writing table' in an account dated the 22nd April 1738 (see C. Gilbert, 'Channon Revisited', Furniture History, 1994, p.83). The present table was no doubt originally carved with club feet corresponding to those of the table in the Victoria & Albert Museum.