The commode's palm-flowered frieze and medallions, displayed in scalloped patterae are coloured in the 'Etruscan' fashion popularised by Robert and James Adam's Works in Architecture, 1773. The figures of Hercules and his companion derive from Baron Pierre d'Hancarville's Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Honarable William Hamilton, Naples 1766-67. The figure of Hercules seated in the Hesperian Garden was taken from a vase illustrated in d'Hancarville's second volume. The figures from this vase also featured on a pembroke table japanned in the 1770s by Henry Clay (d.1812) japanner of London and Birmingham (see M. Tomlin, Catalogue of Adam Period Furniture, London 1982, no. J/5