No. 5 Hamilton Place, just off Park Lane in London, was built in 1805 and designed by the architect Thomas Leverton. A fine example of a Georgian townhouse built in that period, the house underwent a major refurbishment carried out by Leopold de Rothschild in the late 1870s-1880s. An Italianate villa on what is now Curzon Street, it was modified by the architect William Rogers from the existing house originally acquired by Leopold's father, Lionel (see P. Prevost-Macilhacy, Les Rothschild bâtisseurs et mécènes, Paris, 1995, p. 342).

The house at No. 5, of grey stone, was particularly tall, and said to have been based on an annexe to the Château de Chantilly. The ground floor incorporated an Italian Renaissance library leading to a dining room with white marble walls and crimson upholstery and curtains. The first floor contained two interconnecting drawing rooms decorated in the Louis XV style bordering a plant-filled conservatory (illustrated in C.S. Sykes, Private Palaces, New York, 1986, p. 305).

A suitable acquisition for the Grand Siècle room this desk probably dates from the third quarter of the nineteenth century when Empress Eugènie's fascination with Marie-Antoinette sparked a fashionable revival of the Louis XVI style.