This sofa writing-table, with its patera-enriched Etruscan-black reeded pillar and scrolled cornice plinth of Grecian capital form, was designed by the cabinet-maker George Bullock (d. 1818) of Tenterden Street, Hanover Square. The overall design appears in an unbound folio of the Tracings of Thomas Wilkinson, from the Designs by the late Mr. George Bullock (now in the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham), while its brass-galleried top is wreathed with a flowered top ribbon-band in the Louis XIV arabesque manner that corresponds exactly with Wilkinson's mirror image border design (unbound no. 208). A closely related border design, inscribed 'FOR LADY SPENCER'S table', is dated 1818 (unbound no. 232).

The table supplied circa 1817 to Matthew Robinson Boulton (d. 1842) for Tew Park, Oxfordshire (sold by the Executors of the late Major Eustace Robb from Tew Park, Christie's house sale, 27-29 May 1987, lot 33) exhibits a border of identical design but inlaid in holly on an oak ground. However, exactly the same border can be found on another of Bullock's principal commissions, Endsleigh House, Devon. Endsleigh was designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford by the Prince Regent's architect, Sir Jeffrey Wyattville (d. 1840) and it was to Bullock that the Duke turned for its furnishings. Amongst this suite was a circular table with Ionic-voluted plinth, illustrated in C. Hussey, 'Endsleigh, Devon', Country Life, 10 August 1961, p. 299, fig. 10