The restrained ornament of this elegant elliptical pier table, with its French 'ribboned stick' border, palm-capped baluster feet and colourful slab which is painted with a foliate 'rosette' and bands of 'arabesque' foliage, represents the fashionable Louis XVI taste of the early 1780's. This 'antique' style, associated with George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV, later popularised by A. Hepplewhite's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1787, and Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793-4. The top's intricate bands of 'sacred' urns and Grecian palmettes wreathed by Roman foliage relate to contemporary French silk borders and, like the rosette's feathery acanthus, which derives from the Apollo ceiling, illustrated in R. Woods, Palmyra, 1753, indicates the hand of the celebrated peintre ébéniste George Brookshaw (d. 1823). In 1782 Brookshaw's 'Elegant Furniture and Upholstery Warehouse' opened in Great Marlborough Street; about the time that he was employed under the architect Henry Holland (d. 17..) on the embellishment of Carlton House for the Prince of Wales. His particular speciality as a flower-painter involved him as a designer for the prominent wallpaper firm of George Frederick Exkhardt & Co., and he was also the author of A New Treatise of Flower Painting, 1797, and Pomona Britannica, 1804, which was dedicated to the Prince of Wales. This table top relates in particular to that of the pier 'commode-table' at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, attributed to him by Lucy Wood, 'George Brookshaw', Apollo, July 1991, fig. 6