The firm of John Marsh and Edward Jones of Leeds purchased the old established London business of John Kendell of London in 1864, opening a show room in Cavendish Square, and in 1872 entered into partnership with Henry Cribb. The firm employed many of the leading designers in the fashionable Gothic taste of the 1860's-1870's. Notable among these were Charles Bevan who designed the lavish suite supplied to the Yorkshire mill owner Titus Salt in 1865, now at Lotherton Hall, Yorkshire, and Bruce Talbert (d.1881), author of Gothic Forms Applied to Furniture, 1868, and Examples of Ancient and Modern Furniture, 1876. The latter publication illustrates a sideboard designed for Marsh, Jones and Cribb, pl.33. The rosette carving centering the supports of the offered chairs relates closely to that on a blanket chest from the Salt suite, supplied at a later date to the remainder of the suite and attributed to Talbert (illustrated in C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, 1978, vol.II, pl.521p). The incised stylized foliate decoration of the uprights also relates to Talbert's published designs and to the famous 'Pericles' sideboard designed by Talbert and exhibited by its manufacturers Holland and Sons at the 1867 Paris exhibition (illustrated in J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Decor, 1987, pl.206). The overall form of these throne chairs is derived from ancient Roman seats revived by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl.VII. It also relates to other contemporary Gothic designs such as an 'Old English' pattern chair with incised decoration illustrated by the Manchester designer Richard Charles in his Cabinet Maker's Pattern Book, 1877 and a Puginesque X-frame chair illustrated in the Cabinet-Maker's Pattern Book, 1877, isssued by the publishers Messrs Wyman and Sons.