This bureau-cabinet, with its triumphal-arched cornice and krater-vase finials, is designed in the elegant 'antique' manner promoted by Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793. It belongs to a group of cabinets attributed to the upholder George Simson (d. 1839) who established his cabinet-workshops in St. Paul's churchyard in 1787 and a Piccadilly Warehouse in Dover Street in 1793. He was a subscriber to both Sheraton's Drawing-Book and his Cabinet Dictionary, 1803; the former features a pattern (pl. 64) that corresponds to a Simson-labelled Lady's secretaire which is illustrated in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, fig. 22. Both this labelled secretaire and a tea-chest bearing the label that he used during the late 1790's (ibid., figs. 20 and 21) feature the eared-tablet panels seen on this bureau-cabinet. Simson is also credited with the manufacture of a similar clock-mounted cabinet, that was exhibited in the late 18th Century at the clock museum emporium established by Thomas Weeks in Titchbourne Street, and is now displayed in the City Museum, Birmingham (see: R. Fastnedge, Sheraton Furniture, London, 1962, fig. 75).
A cabinet of similar design is illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London, rev. ed., 1954, vol. I, p. 198, fig. 71