Frank Brangwyn is best remembered today as a painter but he was also a prolific designer of rugs, textiles, stained glass and furniture. This print cabinet, made for his own use, is fitted inside with seven sliding trays and six pigeon holes. The plainness of the shape and the dominance of its two-dimensional decoration, make it easy to see that the cabinet was designed with a painter's sensibility for framed compositions on flat surfaces.

Its simplicity also recalls furniture design from east Asia, and perhaps Brangwyn intended to suggest the picture was made from incised Chinese lacquer (laquer exported from China to Europe, where it is known as Coromandel lacquer). However, the draped figures in the picture look more Caucasian than Asian and the landscape features Italianate temples rather than pagodas. Moreover, the inclusion of flamingos and parrots, and the outlandish clothes, place the scene in the realms of myth rather than history or geography.