The serpentine top with recessed and elliptic corners and elegant arabesque inlay relates to a 'pier-table' pattern illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, Appendix, 1793, pl. IV. Its acanthus-scroll inlay, which frames a laurel-festooned sacred-urn with ram-head handles, corresponds to that of the commode's frieze which is embellished with a Grecian palmette amongst Roman foliage and with Grecian laurel baguettes tied through sunflower-paterae. Further paterae surmount the legs' pilasters which are inlaid with husks and terminate in hermed and flute-inlaid feet.
Its 'pier-table' form and ornament accompanying large-scale vases also feature on a pair of commodes in the Royal Collection. Described as 'satinwood inlaid commode tables to stand under piers with semi-circular fronts.., the doors, drawers, and tops richly engraved with urns, vases, flowers and ornaments in woods of different colours', the latter were executed in 1781 for the Buckingham Palace apartments of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV (d.1830), and supplied by William Gates (d. circa. 1800) of St. Martin's Lane, cabinet-maker to King George III (see R. Edwards, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, rev.ed., London, 1955, p. 216, fig. 183 and The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 332-333)