The serpentine-framed and ribbon-splat chair with animal feet emerging from 'arabesque' acanthus-scrolls first featured in William de la Cour's Book of Ornament, but these chairs, which are embellished with Zeus' eagle-heads and claws have various details, such as the loop-pattern back combined with flowered acanthus and confronted c-scroll cartouches, which relate most closely to the parlour chair patterns published in Robert Manwaring's Cabinet and Chair-Maker's Real Friend and Companion, 1765 (see. E.White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, pp.59, 76 and 77). Their richly carved frames relate to that of a cabinet-on-stand reputed to have been supplied by Messrs Gillow of Lancaster to the Bellot family of Manchester; and as these chairs likewise have a Lancashire provenance, it is possible that they too can be attributed to Gillow (see. C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, vol. I, pp.50-51, no.37.

Gillows of Lancaster and London were one of the great cabinet-making firms of the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, and as Lindsay Boynton comments, have risen in status remarkably over the past 50 years, as a result of more in depth studies of the Gillow’s archive. The Gillow family had workshops in Lancaster from about 1730 and later opened a London showroom. Robert Gillows was the first of the family, and was succeeded by his sons Richard and Robert, and between them they were connected with the firm until about 1820. Later, the business continued under their name, and many of the records going back to 1740s have survived.