Lot Essay
The press, displaying fine silken-figured mahogany tablets, has its Egyptian-reed and Pompeian-pillared corners raised on Grecian-urn feet in the French/antique fashion popularised by Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet Encyclopaedia, 1806-8; and by George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808. Designed, no doubt, to harmonise with bed-posts, the pillar capitals entwined reeds correspond to the ornament of one of Smith's Roman-candelabra patterns (Smith, ibid, pl. 139).