The chairs' Grecian-scrolled pattern with X-frame back derives from a French tabouret pattern by Charles Percier, and a chair in the London mansion/museum of the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1831), which he illustrated in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1807 (pl.11). The actual chair from Duchess Street was sold from the collection of the late Mrs. Marjorie Beatrix Fairbarns, in these Rooms, 9 July 1992, lot 87 and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The stamp of E. Wood, features on a related chair, with plain rather than flowered pattera, that formed part of a set of twelve sold anonymously in these Rooms, 7 October 1993 (lot 37). This may be the stamp of the chairmaker Edward Wood recorded in Old Street, London in 1817 ( The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986). The latter set also relates to chairs at Oulton Park, Cheshire illustrated in H. Avray Tipping and C. Hussey, English Homes, Period IV, vol. II, London 1928, p.218.
Gillows also executed chairs of this pattern, and a set of twenty-four open armchairs supplied by Gillows to Elizabeth Brooke (d.1809) in June 1803, were sold on behalf of the Executors of the late Mrs. Helen Langford-Brooke, Mere Hall, Knutsford, Cheshire, Christie's house sale, 23 May 1994, lot 106. The Mere Hall chairs had twisting paterae on their X-shaped splats.