A set of twelve armchairs of carved and gilded mahogany covered in silk damask. Curved backs with x-shaped ribbed front legs, on lion's paw feet. Back legs splayed and all fitted with castors. Carved with anthemion and scrolled motifs. These armchairs form part of a very extensive suite of seat furniture made for George IV's new Private Apartments at Windsor Castle, and like them come from a very large suite of seat furniture, consisting of seven sofas, twelve armchairs, thirty-one side chairs, two reading chairs and a writing chair. Forty-one of the fifty-three pieces were intended for the Green Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, the remainder for the King's Writing Room. Those for the Green Drawing Room were covered in green silk supplied by W.E. King at a cost of £2 5s. per yard. Exclusive of the silk, the cost of the entire suite was £6,956. As in the case of the suite for the Crimson Drawing Room, the excessive quantity supplied by Morel & Seddon resulted in the removal of some pieces by the early 1830s and their reuse at Buckingham Palace. The distinctive x-frame front support and deeply curved back both have antique precedents and were relatively common in the repertoire of English and French furniture design from the beginning of the nineteenth century; plate 7 of Thomas Hope's 'Household Furniture' (1807) shows a typical example of this form. The Green Drawing Room was reckoned by all who visited Windsor to be the most successful of the new suite of drawing rooms built and furnished for George IV on the east side of the Castle between 1826 and 1830. Like the adjacent rooms, it combined furniture and fittings from Carlton House with new pieces supplied by Morel & Seddon. Badly damaged in the fire of 1992, the room has since been restored and new silk of the original pattern has been woven for walls, curtains and upholstery of the seat furniture, including these armchairs. Catalogue entry from Royal Treasures, A Golden Jubilee Celebration, London 2002