This chair came from a suite of furniture created for the royal Palace of Fontainebleau south of Paris. It is based on a pattern by the French architects and designers Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, and executed by the master menuisier, or wood carver and joiner, Georges Jacob of Paris. Percier and Fontaine played an important role in the development and spread of the neoclassical style during the late 18th century. In 1801, they published the first installment of a highly influential pattern book titledRecueil de decoration interieur. Their designs were based on archaeological discoveries at the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum near Naples, Italy, which Percier and Fontaine sketched during their travels. The designers borrowed certain elements directly from those ancient sources, such as the sphinxes supporting the arms of this chair, as well as from Egyptian antiquity, seen in the headdresses of the sphinxes.