The bookcase's mosaiced glazing, in octagon and lozenged compartments, relates to a pattern incorporated in a 'Gothic Library Book-Case' issued in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, 1754 (pl. 75). Chippendale considered his fretted, pinnacled and pagoda-canopied design as, 'perhaps one of the best of its kind, and would give me great pleasure to see it executed, as I doubt not to its making an exceeding genteel and grand appearance'.