Designed in the early 19th Century antique style, after the French manner, these caned bergère library reading-chairs are fitted with a French stuffed leather cushion. With their reed-enriched legs, sunk-panel frame and columnette-supports to the arms, they relate to a pattern illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist's Encyclopaedia, 1804. With their arm fitted for a book-rest, their back is appropriately serpentined in lyre form alluding to that of an Apollo chair, illustrated by Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet Encyclopaedia, 1807, pl. 10. Messrs Gillow, in their Estimate Sketch Book for 31 March 1803 (Westminster Public Library, mss. no. 1721) refer to this form of bergère as Ashburnham, while by 1807 it is referred to as an Uxbridge chair after one supplied to Henry Bayly, 1st Earl of Uxbridge. A related chair was sold anonymously at Christie's London, 27 February 1992, lot 58, while a related pair supplied to Broughton Hall by Gillows 1811-13 are illustrated in C. Hussey English Country Houses; late Georgian, Glasgow, 1958, p. 95, fig. 166