The pattern for this pier-table top, with sunk and rounded corners and columnar legs, was published in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793 (pl. IV). Sheraton commented on the effect of 'rich and elegant' japanning, and the ground decoration of this table can be interpreted as 'Etruscan' black or Chinese black lacquer. In addition its frieze is decorated with Chinese pastoral vignettes framing a palm-wreathed tablet of the youths of antiquity sporting with Cupid's target, while the flower-festooned top depicts Cupid and Hymen attending a Chinese landscape vignette with a fisherman. The fusion of antique and Chinese taste in the 1790s was a feature of the Marine Pavilion, Brighton, created by George, Prince of Wales, later George IV.