Celebrating the sun and hunter deity Apollo's poetic triumph as leader of the muses of artistic inspiration, this chair is designed in the George III French/Grecian manner of the 1780s and has a wreath-like medallion seat. Such chairs aroused 'charming harmony' commented the diarist Horace Walpole, when he saw related chairs 'taken from antique lyres', that had been designed in the 1760s for Osterley Park, Middlesex by the architect Robert Adam (M. Tomlin, Catalogue of Adam Period Furniture, London, 1982, no. C/1).
The lyre motif was to be greatly favoured by the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker John Linnell (d.1796), and features in particular in his 1789 organ-case designs, that he proposed for the grand London Music Room of Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge (d.1812). These designs, featuring Apollo trophies and a laurel-crowned medallion, harmonised with the room's Parisian ormolu grate. A 1788 design for the latter features in Linnell's album preserved in the Victoria & Albert Museum. It seems possible that this chair was commissioned by the Earl of Uxbridge and designed by John Linnell, who was famed as an artist/designer.