The marble-topped pier-table's Roman bronzed pillars, Egyptian-flowered with golden lotus or 'Nile lilies', reflect the French antique fashion introduced around 1800 by Thomas Hope and popularised by his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. When he illustrated this robust form of taper-pillared leg in his Repository of Arts, 1809, Rudolph Ackermann commented 'The barbarous Egyptian style, which a few years since prevailed, is succeeded by the classic elegance which characterized the most polished ages of Greece and Rome'.