Pair of rectangular upright secretaires veneered in ebony and panels of Japanese lacquer showing landscape scenes and birds, with gilt bronze mounts. The top with brocatelle marble slab beneath which is a drawer decorated with a gilt rbonze anthemion motif on front and sides. Top supported by two caryatid figures with baskets on their heads in gilt bronze, flanking the doors (one of the pair has a drop-front door). Supported on four square section legs with gilt bronze capitals, joined at the bottom with a stretcher with a brocatelle marble panel. This is supported on four bun feet. Over a period of forty years, Bernard Molitor (1755-1833) supplied the ancien régime, the Napoleonic court and the restored Bourbon monarchy with furniture in an elegant and relatively unchanging neo-classical style. These secretaires were acquired in Paris by George IV’s Clerk-Comptroller of the Kitchen and ‘scout’, Jean-Baptiste Watier. They were sent to Brighton Pavilion in 1817. These cabinets are very similar to a pair in the Louvre, ordered by Marie Antoinette in 1790, completed in 1793 and finally purchased by Louis XVIII from Molitor in 1820.