The top of black rosewood is inlaid, after the French fashion, with brass fillets in an Etruscan-black ribbon-band of ebony. Its trestle-ends, supported on scrolled 'claws' and brass lion-paws, recall Euterpe, Muse of lyric poetry, while their Grecian-lyre pilasters are surmounted by Cupid-bow cornices painted with Love's ribbon-tied darts. The basic pattern for this type of writing-table intended to accompany a Grecian sofa, relates to the 'harp'-ended tables of ebony-banded rosewood, invoiced in 1802 by Thomas Chippendale Junior for Stourhead, Wiltshire (J. Kenworthy-Brown, 'Notes on the Furniture by Thomas Chippendale the Younger at Stourhead', National Trust Year Book 1975-76, London, p. 96, fig. 9) and a trestle-pattern for a richly- painted 'Ladies Work Table' published in Thomas Sheraton's Appendix to the Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1802, pl. 26.