This highly unusual chair shares several characteristics with a small group of seat furniture which thought to be made by Chinese chair makers working in Goa in the mid-18th Century. The distinctive splat piercing, the optical 90 degree twist in the carved moulding of the stile, the form of the cabriole leg and hooded claw foot together with the distinctive turned x-frame stretchers are evident throughout the group. The one element unique to this chair as far as we know if the incoporation of the geckoes cresting the top rail and another carved in relief climbing up the back splat. In Asian cultures, the lizard, especially the gecko, is often seen as a sign of luck and prosperity and as a guardian of the home.

In the mid-18th century, Goa was the largest territory in what became known as the State of Portuguese India, but this chair reflects the fashion for English furniture forms that was popular in southern India at that time. Amin Jaffer (in  'Furniture from British India and Ceylon' New Delhi 2001) cites an example which illustrates how this amalgamation of styles might come about in the example of Captain Robert Smith who advertised in Calcutta that he would be departing for China and would take commissions for items to be made there. Trade in bespoke and large consignments of furniture from China to India was clearly brisk as it was cheaper than that imported from Europe and was of a high quality (ibid. p. 92). As well as furniture made in China for the Europeans in India, there were also Chinese tradesmen living and working in India, so it is likely that this chair was made in Goa by Chinese cabinet makers (ibid., p. 94-95).

There is a related pair of corner chairs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no. 312A-1879). Amin Jaffer explains that, when these chairs were acquired by the V&A in 1879, they were believed to be of mid-eighteenth Century English manufacture. It has since been discovered that the chairs were in fact, made by a Chinese chair maker in Goa, and represent the fashion for English furniture there.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses a Company painting from the mid-18th Century depicting an English official in discussion with a nawab and his sons, while seated on cabriole legged chairs with the same distinctive low cross-stretchers (object no.2022.195.) Jaffer explains that chairs were used in India as signifiers of rank and were not otherwise generally in use for the purposes of comfort. Images from the early 1600s onwards show that they were used as thrones or for meetings with important European visitors, rather than for functional purposes such as sitting to eat or write at a desk (ibid. p. 113).

Thomas Coulborn and Sons has previously sold a two-seat settee and a set of four side chairs with similarities to the form of this chair, and all attributed to Chinese chair makers working in Goa.