The rectangular top above a series of real and opposing faux drawers, raised on panelled platform ends. Thomas Hope, (born 1769, Amsterdam ; obit. 1831, London) He was an author and furniture designer and was a major exponent of the Regency style of English decorative arts. From a rich banking family that had emigrated from Scotland to Holland. During his youth he studied architecture and travelled extensively in Mediterranean countries. He settled in London about 1796 and in 1807 purchased Deepdene, the country house in Surrey that he decorated and furnished in the Regency style. Included in its furnishings were statues executed by John Flaxman, a leading English Neoclassical sculptor, and an Egyptian sofa and chair now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Hope’s major work on interior design is Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807; facsimile ed., 1937), which influenced the Neoclassical movement. He also wrote The Costumes of the Ancients (1809) and Designs of Modern Costume (1812). His most popular work was the novel Anastasias; or, Memoirs of a Greek Written at the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1819).