This bureau dressing-table of ormolu-enriched exotic wood with its sarcophagus 'commode' frame of Grecian-lyre profile and richly sculpted and serpentined frame, typifies the St. Martin's Lane 'French' style of the mid-18th century. Its sarcophagus outline, which derives from a Louis XIV commode pattern engraved by Jean Berain (d. 1711) relates to contemporary brass-inlaid tea-chests attributed to John Channon of St. Martin's Lane, and to others illustrated in contemporary trade-cards and in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directors (1754-69), pl. CXXVIII. The latter also includes swell-sided clothes-press patterns (pl. XCIX and CXXVI), a swell-sided 'French commode' (pl. LXVIII), as well as one with drawer-fitted recess and rich ormolu-swagged handles (pl. LXX) and a voluptuous French 'toylet table' (pl. CXVIII). While this bureau's frame relates closely to those of Chippendale's French easy-chairs, its fitted drawer above the triumphal-arched recess is incised with flowered trellis and hollow-ended panels forming a medallion around the escutcheon, as features on the celebrated pedestal-desk supplied by Chippendale for the library at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire. The bureau's acanthus-scrolled feet conceal castors, and its sides display fanciful carrying-handles with French scalloped-cartouche-plates. Another remarkable feature of this superbly crafted item is that its back is constructed like that of pedestal desks, with trompe l'oeil drawers to match the front. This feature, combined with its tripartite form with pilasters capped by Palladian scrolled brackets, no doubt indicates that is was intended, like Chippendale's dressing-table inthe architect James Paine's state apartment at Nostell, to stand before a Venetian window whose tripartite form was an important feature of the Palladian villa