These elegant neo-classical chairs, originally a set of six, with their 'poetical' Apollo-lyre splat, were supplied in about 1773 by Thomas Chippendale to Sir Penistone Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne (d.1828) for his library at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, which, like his London house, Melbourne House in Piccadilly (now the Albany), was being furnished under the direction of the court architect Sir William Chambers (d.1796). Their commission from Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) is likely to have been encouraged by Lady Melbourne's (née Elizabeth Milbanks) family connections in Yorkshire. Their Grecian lyre splat, with bowed crest-rail centred by a Palmyrene 'sunflower' medallion, was adapted from a 'parlour chair' pattern, invented in 1767 by the architect Robert Adam (d.1792) and transformed into library armchairs, designed the following year by Chippendale, under Adam's direction, for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire (Gilber, op.cit., fig.150). While also adopting the Nostell pattern's Grecian fret arm-supports and 'palmette' eared top-rails, these chairs, with their plinth-supported legs of reeded-torch form capped by fluted tablets, display Chippendale's more refined style of the early 1770s.

The chairs were originally upholstered in buttoned red leather with a double row of beaded brass nails (Macquoid, op.cit., ), One of these chairs now belongs to the Chippendale Society of Otley (Gilbert, op.cit., p.263).