The sideboard is richly fretted and jewelled in the romantic George IV 'Elizabethan' manner popularised by Thomas King's The Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified, 1829. It is likely to have been commissioned for Mamhead, Devonshire by Sir Robert Newman (d. 1848) M.P. for Exeter, whose picturesque mansion was celebrated for its 'Elizabethan' furnishings, was designed in the late 1820s by the architect Anthony Salvin (d. 1881). One of Salvin's tables, designed for the principal bedroom apartment, is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and relates closely to an Elizabethan table pattern issued in Richard Bridgens' Furniture and Candelabra, 1838 (F.Collard, Regency Furniture, Woodbridge, 1985, p. 186). It has been suggested that Thomas Willement, the celebrated author, antiquarian and interior decorator, assisted with the design of the Mamhead furnishings (Collard, op. cit., p. 187).