This stand is one of a pair similar to furniture designed by Thomas Hope for his own house in Duchess Street, London. The design, based on a Roman marble tripod table purchased by Hope in Rome in the late 1790’s, was published in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration in 1807. In the publication it is described as a ‘tripod table supported by chimaeras’ (chimeras were mythical creatures with lion's head, goat's body and serpent's tail).

This stand and its pair are thought to have been at Clumber Park, a large house in Nottinghamshire which has now been demolished. It is possible that the stands came to be at Clumber because they once belonged to Hope’s descendant, the 5th Duke of Newcastle, owner of Clumber Park.