This pattern of chair, with its Grecian 'klismos' back and scrolled legs, is designed in the antique manner introduced around 1800 by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d. 1818) at his Duchess Street mansion museum and their design was published in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl. XXVI, no. 2. His pattern features a side-chair whose hollowed-seat is fitted with gimp-edged squab cushion. They also relate to two other Duchess Street chair suites. Their gilt-enriched 'Etruscan' black colour scheme, together with the bolted tablet back and sunk-panelled splat, corresponds to the celebrated Egyptian chairs embellished with ornament derived from temples at Thebes and Tentyris (Dundura). Their sunk-ribbon panels, which also flute the top of the scrolled arm-rests, feature on the mahogany library chairs (ibid, ps. VIII and XI, fig. 3). The manufacture of Hope's library chair, after the latter pattern, has been related to the firm of William Marsh and Thomas Tatham of Mount Street. This firm may also have executed these chairs. The library chair was sold by the Executors of the late Mrs. Marjorie Beatrice Fairbarns, in these Rooms, 9 July 1992, lot 87, and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge