Designed in the George II 'antique' or 'Palladian' manner promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and the artist/architect Willaim Kent (d. 1748), this pedimented and tablet-enriched bookcase relates to a pattern for a 'Tuscan Bookcase' published by Batty Langley in his City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, pl. CLVII. The cornice's ornament of a band of egg-and -dart and the tablet's flower-festooned deity derives from a chimney-piece pattern, in the manner of Inigo Jones (d.1654), published by the architect Isaac Ware, in his Designs of Inigo Jones and Others, 1743. Its torus moulded cornice is carved with ribbon-bound olive-leaves and the crescent-crowned mask is that of Diana. The large scale of the glazing bars relates to that of the the bookcase supplied by Messrs. William Vile and John Cobb to Queen Charlotte in 1762 (see R. Edwards, Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p55.

Closely related bookcases were sold at Christie's London from the Montague Meyer Family Collection, 24 April 1980, lot 83 and in an anonymous sale, 2 October 1986, lot 167.

Herriard Park was commissioned by the cultivated Whig politician Thomas Jervoise (d.1743) on the hereditary lands of the Cowdray family. Although no documentary evidence exists to indicate the author of the 'New House', which was completed by 1704, as M.P. for Hampshire from 1691-1710, it seems most probable that Jervoise called upon the services of the celebrated local architect and pupil of the Whig Hawsksmoor John James of Basingstoke (d.1746). While the Tuscan inspiration of this bookcase correlates directly with the masculine Tuscan giant order that is the sole ornamentation of the facade, it is possible that it was supplied shortly after Richard Jervoise's succession upon his father's death in 1743.

The bookcase is illustrated in situ in the Library in C. Hussey, 'Herriard Park, Hampshire', Country Life, July 1 1965, p. 20, fig 7