This brightly coloured table, golden veneered in Indian sandalwood, is enriched with black and white ornament after the 'Etruscan' manner popularised for fashionable bedroom apartments by the 1773 publication of The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam. With its elegantly serpentined frame, china-tray gallery and 'candlebearers', it corresponds to Lady Hume's 'writing-table' designed by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) of St. Martin's Lane and supplied in 1774 for Paxton House, Berwickshire by Messrs Chippendale, Haig & Co. (Paxton House, Guidebook, fig. 25).