This is one of a large set of chairs that were made to furnish the main state apartment at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Houghton was built between 1722 and 1735 for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), England’s first prime minister. The first designs for Houghton were made by the architect James Gibbs in 1722. William Kent, who was establishing himself as a architectural decorator in the 1720s, took over decoration and furnishing of the main floor of the house in 1725. The chairs, with their impressive sculptural carving and oil gilded frames, are likely to have been designed by a chair-maker working under Kent's direction. They are very unusual in that they retain their original structural upholstery, and as such offer very important and interesting evidence of the methods of chairmaking and upholstery that were current in London workshops of the 1730s.