At the end of the 17th century and for much of the early part of the 18th century, it was common in Britain to decorate the ends of staircase treads in fine houses with carved panels. These brackets are part of a large collection of architectural woodwork that was given to the Museum in 1921 by the architect Sir Charles Allom, of the decorating firm White Allom & Co., who specialised in interior decoration. Most of the items, including these ones, came without any record of their previous history. These panels are larger than most domestic stair ends and it is possible that they were part of some other sort of scheme demanding carved console panels to support a shelf or other pieces of woodwork, or that they come from a particularly large staircase.