Close connections were established between England and Holland in the second half of the 17th Century when the future King Charles II was in exile and subsequently when England had a Dutch King. As a result, an Anglo-Dutch style developed in cabinet-making, particularly due to the influx of immigrant craftsmen, the most celebrated of whom was perhaps Gerrit Jensen (d. 1715), who was known for his furniture `inlaid with metall', which appears in the Royal accounts on several accounts.

The similarities in chair-making are particularly striking, and the nationality of several chairs remain ambiguous, mainly due to the scarcity of documented examples, although a large number of models seems to have originated from Holland. Ralph Edwards mentions that `The turning affords the most reliable guide to the nationality. The English spiral twist has a narrow rope with deep hollows, whereas in Dutch turning the rope is thick, the resulting twist being close and rapid.' (R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p. 125)

The present armchair is closely related to an example, which the painter Nicolaas Pieneman (1809-1860) left to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (Royal Antiquarian Society) and is currently exhibited in the Rijksmuseum. (R.J. Baarsen, Nederlandse Meubelen 1600-1800, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 54-55)

See illustration