The 'bronze' bass reliefs of this silken-figured mahogany commode celebrate the Arts of Peace; and reflect the Napoleonic Empire style promoted by Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, Paris, 1801. With its grecian plinth and antique-bronzed and palm-wrapped lion paws, it relies for effect on these golden Homeric figures derived from Roman triumphal arches. In antiquity, such winged and trumpeting nymphs, known as Nike spread the fame of triumphs in both war and peace. They evoke choragic triumphs and bear victors' laurel-wreaths towards 'poetic' escutcheons, that are comprised of Apollo's palm-wreathed lyres. Their form relates in particular to those featured in the receuil of Pierre-Louis-Arnulphe Duguers de Montrosier (d.1806), who had established a partnership in 1799 with the marchand-ébéniste Hutin of the boulevard des Italiens, and specialised in such 'bronze' enriched furniture appropriate to the newly named Garde-Meuble Imperiale. Duguers' receuil was issued for the 1806 Paris Exhibition des produits de l'industrie francaise, and entitled les meubles, pendules et candelabres, composes et executes par L. Dugours. A trumpeting Nike featured in an engraving celebrating the Arts of Peace; and including an additonal laurel-bearing Nike on a Mars Pacificator trophy that stood on a table displaying an Imperial eagle amongst Roman lictors' rods.

Amongst related mahogany and 'bronze' furniture is a secretaire bearing the stamp of the ébéniste Francois-Xavier Heckel of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who was a contributor to the 1806 Exhibition (D. Ledoux-Lebard, Le Moblier Francais du XIX Siecle, Paris,1989, p.255). Amongst the most celebrated examples of such furniture is that supplied in 1809 for the Tuileries for Emperor Napoleon by François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter, who also provided Empress Marie-Louise's jewel-cabinet with its ormolu figures executed by Chaudet (D. Ledoux-Lebard, ibid, p. 339 and pl. XIX).