Its 'antique' style incorporates a Palladian cornice derived from a 'Dorick Bookcase', illustrated in B. Langley, City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, fig. CLIX, while the symbolic bronze enrichments and ebony inlay represent the Grecian manner introduced by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. It is ornamented with appropriate library-bookcase decoration and has the olive-wreathed owls of Athena, accompanied by Grecian pilasters, plamettes and lozenged-tablet framing a star, emblematic of Night. Its hollowed pilasters, displaying the ring-bound shafts of legislator's reeds (fasces), feature on a bookcase (illustrated by Messrs. Stair & Company Ltd. in the National Art Collections Review, 1989). The latter bears the label of Robert Herring & Son, cabinet-makers and upholsterers of Fleet Street, and was supplied for the Lord Mayor's Mansion House in the City of London.

The wreathed owls, which also feature on The Anglesey Desk attributed to Messrs. Marsh & Tatham of Mount Street (see lot 125), may have been executed by Alexis de Caix.