The fashion for marble-topped night-tables with plinth-supported 'commode' pedestals in the French manner was popularised by George Smith's, Household Furniture, 1808. These sturdy oak tables with gothic cluster-columns, arcading and tambour-like linen-folds, are designed in the ancient British or the 'Saxo-Norman' style introduced around 1830 by George Hay Dawkings Penant (d. 1840) at Penrhyn Castle, under the direction of Thomas Hopper (d. 1856), architect. A variant of this pattern, executed for Penrhyn at the Castle's workshops under the direction of the Clerk of Works Mr Baxter, is illustrated in J. Marsden, 'Neo-Norman furnishings at Penrhyn Castle', Apollo, April 1993, p. 268, fig. 5. It was suggested that inspiration for their design derived in part from John Carter, Ancient Architecture of England, 1795-1814, while its Norman fashion was encouraged by C.A. Stothard's 1819 engraving of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Another night-table of this pattern was sold Sotheby's 7 July 1989, lot 140