The shield-back form is first recorded in Messrs. Gillows Estimate Sketch Books in 1782 and was adopted in a hall chair pattern illustrated by A Hepplewhite & Co in their, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788, pl. 11; this had already featured on a cabriole chair in Messrs. Gillows of London and Lancaster's pattern book for November 1786 (mss. preserved in Westminster Library). This antique pelta form was favoured by the architect James Wyatt and appeared in one of his room elevations of the 1770's, illustrated by J. Fowler and J. Cornforth, English Decoration in the 18th Century, London, 1986, fig. 13. In the 1840 inventory, '4 mahogany shield-back chairs' were listed in the hall, a fifth in a 'Bath Room', and another four in the Billiard Room. A related set of 12 hall chairs were supplied by Gillows of Lancaster in 1789 for Stephen Tempest of Broughton Hall, Yorkshire (illustrated in Gillow Chairs and Fashion, Exhibtion Catalogue Blackburn 1991, p17-19)