There is a design for 'Library Reading Chairs' published in Ackermann's Repository of Arts for September 1810 which includes a chair of a similar model. In the caption, it says, 'gentlemen either sit across, with the face towards the desk, contrived for reading, writing, &c. and which, by a rising rack, can be elevated at pleasure; or, when its occupier is tired of the first position, it is with the greatest ease turned round in a brass grove [sic.], to either one side or the other; in which case, the gentleman sits sideways. The circling arms in either way form a pleaseant easy back, and also, in every direction, supports for the arms. As a proof of their real comfort and convenience, they are now in great sale at the warerooms of the inventors, Messrs. Morgan and Sanders, Catherine-street, Strand' (P. Agius, Ackermann's Regency Furniture and Interiors, Marlborough, 1984, p. 54, pl. 19).

A similar chair is illustrated in M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, rev. ed., 1965, fig. 83. Several other reading-chairs of this distinctive Gothic variation have been sold: one anonymously, in these Rooms, 21 November 1985, lot 12; one anonymously, in these Rooms, 11 April 1991, lot 54; and another also anonymously, in these Rooms, 16 November 1995, lot 341.