These early 19th Century bookcase-commodes display panels of early 18th century Chinese lacquered landscape-vignettes of gardens and lakeside pavilions. Such commodes, designed to stand beneath pier-glasses, were also intended for China display. Their lacquer would have been cut from chests that had been imported from Canton by the East India Company. Related commodes at Firle Place, Sussex are illustrated in A. Oswald, 'Firle Place, Sussex - III', Country Life, 3 March 1955, p. 621, figs. 3 & 4.

The Chinese fashion in the early 19th century was popularised by England's greatest devotee of Chinoiserie, the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Imported lacquer furniture had been integral to English interiors since the early 17th century and its popularity remained constant until the third quarter of the 18th Century when the coolness of Classical Rome prevailed after the publications of Stuart & Revett's Antiquities of Athens of 1762 and the influential interior schemes of Robert Adam (d. 1792). The Prince Regent prompted a revival in Chinoiserie in 1801 when he suddenly decided on an oriental scheme for his Pavilion at Brighton.