These exceptional chairs are very much in the taste championed by a small group of connoisseurs whose figurehead was the Prince Regent, later George IV. The architect and designer Charles Tatham popularised the “x-frame” or curule style of chair with his publication Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture, published in 1799, which included illustrations of 'Antique Seats executed in Bronze from the Collection in the Museum at Portici' (illustrated in a composite image below)

These designs in turn influenced the great furniture designers of the time and it was Thomas Sheraton in his 1803 Cabinet Dictionary who provided the design from which the present chairs are taken.