The French-fashioned chairs, now lacking squab cushions, have columnar 'bergere' arm-supports, and are designed in the Louis Seize fashion popularised by Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793. They are likely to have formed part of the collection of antique French and English furnishings assembled by William Dodge James (d.1913) following his purchase of West Dean Park, Sussex in 1891. He also employed the firm Mellier and Company, whose improvements included a Louis Seize library created in 1902.