This type of secretaire 'cabinet writing-table' featured in Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, January 1810, and was praised in John Loudon's Encyclopedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture, 1833, p. 85, as having 'numerous drawers and divisions for containing papers, money etc; and having on the top a shelf for books. The mechanism is such, that notwithstanding its apparent intricacy, it can be opened and its contents displayed, or shut up and locked, in an instant'. Its boldly reeded columnar legs and acanthus scrolled truss-supports, combined with richly figured mahogany panels within reeded borders, are typical of much of Messrs. Gillow of Lancaster's furniture during George IV's Regency, and a pattern for a related secretaire appears in their sketch books for July 1819, no. 3016 (Westminster City Libraries)