The chairs are of Grecian klismos form with a voluted-arm pattern that became popular in the 1820s, while the Ionic volutes of their tablet crest-rails relate to the type illustrated by Richard Brown in his Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet and Upholstery Furniture, 1822. The chairs with their bacchic lion-feet relate to a pair of Indian engraved ivory chairs displayed in the Curzon Room at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, and illustrated N. Antram, Kedleston Hall, Over Wallop, 1988, p. 55.
These armchairs formed part of the exotic furnishings assembled at Monkton House, Sussex, during the 1930s by Edward James (d. 1982)