The richly carved bookcase, with foliated and pinnacled cornice displaying a heraldic shield and imbricated pillars bearing the initial T, is conceived in the exuberant Louis Douze Gothic style illustrated in the architect A.W.N. Pugin's Gothic Furniture, 1835, and adopted for his furnishing of the New Palace of Westminster and for furniture diplayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (see P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright, Pugin, London, 1994, p. 139, fig. 249). Its architecture relates to that of a cabinet dating from around 1860, illustrated in J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, London, 1987 (fig. 121).