The compass-fronted library reading-chair, fitted with a book-rest and ink-tray, is likely to have been commissioned for Rossie Priory, Perthshire by Charles, 8th Baron Kinnaird (d.1826) for the new library that was created by William Atkinson (d.1839) between 1807 and 1815. With its reed-enriched columnar legs, it relates to a pattern by Messrs. Thomas Morgan and Joseph Sanders of Catherine Street, Strand issued by Rudolph Ackermann in The Repository of Arts, September 1810. Indeed this chair, as well as a related bergère (bearing the stamp RW) at Rossie, (which corresponds to another pattern of caned library chair illustrated by Ackermann) are likely to have been executed by Morgan and Sanders. The bergère was sold by The Rt. Hon. Lord Kinnaird and a member of the Kinnaird Family, in these Rooms, 6 July 1989, lot 119. Ackermann claimed that the reading-chairs were 'in great sale at the warerooms of the inventors', and described this particular pattern as 'a more novel article, but equally convenient and pleasant; 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 ... the gentleman sits sideways'. A related pair of Morgan and Sanders' chairs are listed in the 1813 inventory of Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire.

A closely related chair of this type bears the brand of B. Harmer (Ipswich Museum and Galleries; illustrated in C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p. 257,fig. 473).