LATE 19TH

The desk is designed in the Grecian manner and embellished with Grecian-black ornament. The ends of the plinth supported pedestals are enriched in Roman bronze palm-wrapped handles held by leopard heads such as featured on the chimerical monopodiae of the Vatican's celebrated Roman alabaster tripod tazza. The desk's frieze is enriched with a Grecian ribbon fret at the centres and ends, and above the pedestals with palm-flowered and foliated trophies such as featured on the Barbarini marble tripod and the Borghese altar. The pedestals feature paired and palm-capped pilasters framing tablets displaying palm-flowered rosettes.
The Barbarini tripod, Borghese altar and Vatican Tazza were popularised arounf 1800 by the Rome-trained architectCharles Heathcote Tatham and featured in his influential publications Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture, 1799, and Etchings representing Fragments of Antique Grecian and Roman Architectural Ornament chiefly collected in Italy and drawn from the originals, 1806.