No designer or architect did more to promote the Gothic Revival in nineteenth-century England than Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the designer of this cabinet. Initially working with his father Augustus Charles Pugin on the interiors of Windsor Castle in the 1820s, Pugin argued against the ill effects of the Industrial Revolution and propagandized for a return to the “honest” craftsmanship of the Middle Ages. A convert to Catholicism, Pugin used their churches to showcase his richly layered Gothic Revival decoration, along with the interiors for the new Houses of Parliament in Westminster, executed under his direction during the 1840s, and the Mediaeval Court he created in 1851 for the celebrated exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace shortly before his death. This cabinet displays the range and unity of Pugin’s designs in the intricate marquetry inlays of different colored woods, the carved foliate friezes and the patinated brass grilles protecting the glazed doors. The initials “AB” and “IB” entwined in the marquetry panels refer to its original owners. Pugin had a number of private patrons such as the Earl of Shrewsbury and Earl Somers, and further research should reveal who commissioned the Institute’s cabinet. A sketch in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection of Pugin drawings closely relates to the design for the marquetry panels on this cabinet , while the brass hardware is identical to designs in the Hardman archive in Birmingham, the firm that fabricated most of Pugin’s metalwork.