The chest, whose facade is elegantly bowed and ray-veneered à quatre faces in the French manner of the 1780s, incorporates a brushing-slide and drawers that are veneered with silken-figured mahogany. Its pattern features as a 'French Commode Dressing Chest' in The Cabinet-Maker's London Book of Prices, 1788 (pl. 10, fig. 4), illustrated in E. White Pictoral Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 185; while the pattern for their flower-wreathed medallion handles, with festive ram-headed sacred-urns, features as no. 572 in a late 18th Century metal-worker's 'commode handle' pattern-book illustrated by Nicholas Goodison in 'The Victoria & Albert Museum's Collection of Metal-Work Pattern Books', Furniture History, 1975, (fig. 37)