The rosewood commodes, combining the marble-topped pier-table with the book-cabinet, have gilt enrichments in the French antique fashion appropriate for early 19th century Living-Rooms.
The poetry deity Apollo features in golden bas-relief tablets between laurel-wreaths and echinus moulded cornices; while triumphal palms wreath the stepped plinths and flower the Grecian-scrolled tablets of the frieze and pilasters; whose bases and truss-scrolled capitals are further embellished with Roman acanthus.
While their robust architecture reflects the antique fashion promoted by C. Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine's, Recueil de décorations intérieures, 1801; they relate in particular to a pattern for a rosewood Apollo-headed cabinet, with 'embossed ornaments', that was published in the 1813 edition of R. Ackermann's, Repository of Arts, (pl. 22).