These chairs, of French cabriolet form, have backs ribbon-scrolled to form Roman shields and are japanned Etruscan black in harmony with their accompanying card-tables [Lots 48 and 49]. Apollo sunflowers and ribbon-tied palms are fretted in their triumphal-arched and pearl-wreathed backs; while laurels festoon their herm-tapered legs. Their pattern relates to that of mahogany chairs invented by the celebrated architect James Wyatt (d.1813), whose family worked in close collaboration with the firm of Gillow of London and Lancaster. The latter featured a related pattern in their 1788 Sketch Book (L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, fig. 272).