These elegant chairs, designed in the George III 'antique' manner with columnette-supported crest, reed-and-flute leg and bead-panelled rails derive from the 'French'-style seat-furniture introduced in the 1790's at houses such as Carlton House, London, and Southill, Bedfordshire under the dirsction of the architect Henry Holland (d.1806) and the chairmaker François Hervé (d.1796). The Grecian-cippus crest with its flower-and-palmette scrolls reflects the slightly later fashionable ornament of around 1800 (see: Bedford, Woburn Abbey, Exhibition Catalogue, 1980, figs. 9 and 21, and F.Collard, Regency Furniture, Woodbridge, 1985, pp.33 and 36)