This library table, incorporating a hinged book-rest, is brass-enriched in the French manner and typifies the 'Elegant Parisian Furniture manufactured in rosewood by John McLean and Sons (d. 1825) of Pancras Street. With its satyr-mask and musical trophy corner tablets, Egyptian-striated panels and 'Grecian' scrolled feet, it is of closely related design to that supplied to the 11th Earl of Cassilis for Culzean Castle, Scotland (illustrated in C. Musgrave, 'Culzean Castle', The Connoisseur, March, 1972, p. 154). The design also corresponds closely to the drum table supplied by 'McLane' to John Parker, 1st Earl of Morley (d. 1840) (illustrated in S. Redburn, 'John McLean and Son', Furniture History Society Journal, 1978, figs. 42b and 31b). Labelled 'Manufactured and sold by J McLANE & SONS Pancras Street, Tottenham Court Road, and 58 Upper Marylebone street, Portland Place', the Saltram table must have been supplied shortly after 1818 when the architect John Foulston (d.1842) was engaged to enlarge the Library. A similar library drum table is recorded at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire while another, supplied to the Berkeley Square House of George Villiers, 5th Earl of Jersey, was invoiced as early as 1806 as 'A Rosewood round library writing-table elegantly mounted with ormolu moulding lined with leather, cedar drawers and varnished......¨26.10

As Sheraton remarked in his Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, to which McLean was a subscriber, McLean's furniture was finished 'in the neatest manner'