This magnificent library table can be firmly attributed to the illustrious furniture makers, Gillows of Lancaster & London, who were renowned for their exceptional craftsmanship as well as for their use of the finest timbers.The inclusion of the rich brass ‘buhl’ or ‘trelliswork’ inlay suggests an early Regency date; this mode of decoration, harking back to the ancien régime reign of ‘The Sun King’, was particularly agreeable to the Francophile inclinations of George, Prince of Wales (d. 1830). This type of ornamentation features throughout Gillows’ oeuvre of the second decade of the 19th century, including to a library table with both ‘première’ and ‘contrepartie’ inlay supplied in May 1813 to William Powlett, 2nd Baron Bolton (d. 1850), for Hackwood Park, Hampshire, and to another table, almost certainly by Gillows based on designs in the Estimate Sketch Books, formerly at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire (the first, sold Hackwood Park, Christie’s house sale, 20 April 1998, lot 21; the second, S. Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, vol. I, Woodbridge, 2008, p. 289, pl. 306; sold Christie’s, London, 16 November 1989, lot 80, and later Sotheby’s, London, 24 February 1995, lot 153).

One of the most important Gillows’ library commissions was for Wilbraham Egerton, which included ‘trelliswork panels in the form of ‘brass circles’ and brass mouldings for the doors etc., were sent from London’, now on display at Tatton Park, Cheshire. The presence of brass inlay on furniture possibly suggests production at Gillows' London workshop as metalwork was a specialised trade generally carried on in the neighbourhood of St. Martin’s Lane and Long Acre (ibid., p. 375, pl. 444).