Its eight inset panels – four on the doors of the front, and a pair on each of the sides – are of veneered maple, cameo-carved to reveal the darker walnut beneath.

[1]: 37 The design is reminiscent of Furness's Philadelphia bank buildings, especially the forward-thrusting central pavilion of his 1879 Provident Life & Trust Company (image below).

[3] Talbert's Gothic Forms Applied to Furniture, Metal Work and Decoration for Domestic Purposes was published in Boston in 1873.

[3]: 146 Pabst used a cameo-carved panel and reverse-painted ribbed-glass tiles on an earlier Modern Gothic cabinet, now at the Brooklyn Museum (image below).

[7] Antique furniture dealer Robert Edwards purchased the exhibition cabinet in 1985, from the estate of Granville H. Triplett of Catonsville, Maryland.

Its rooflike pediment, angular base, chamfered edges, truncated columns, elaborate strap hinges, and decorated door panels all link this cabinet to the Modern Gothic furniture of British architect-designers such as Burges.

The scrolling, finely carved brackets, however, specifically suggest the form of Talbert's wall cupboard, and the cutaway pattern of stylized flowers on the upper doors is reminiscent of the decoration on a sideboard that relates closely to the Holland and Sons sideboard of 1867 and is illustrated as number 20 in Gothic Forms.

[3]: 146 Catherine Voorsanger, associate curator of American decorative arts at MMA, was dubious about the Furness attribution, arguing that the cabinet did not show the architect's hand.