Lot Essay
The tap-fitted copper cistern is incorporated in a brass athenienne, designed in the French 'antique' manner. Its frieze is embellished with bacchic ring-bearing leopard-masks and Grecian palmette-enriched acroteria that cap tripod pilasters tied by crossed and ring-centered trusses and is supported on bacchic ram feet. It corresponds to a pattern for a 'tripod table' in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807, pl. XIX. Its design reflects the enthusiasm of the connoisseur, Thomas Hope (d. 1831), who introduced the Napoleonic 'Consular' style of the early Nineteenth Century in the furnishing of his Duchess Street mansion/museum in London. Ring-centered ties also featured on one of his bronze leopard-monopodiae tripods that was described as folding up 'after the manner of ancient tripods' and on the bronze cassolettes that furnished his sideboard-table (see, Household Furniture, pls. XVII, no. 5 and 1X). It is possible that Hope commissioned a pair of water-cisterns (fontaine à eau potable), but published their pattern as for a table. Such cisterns would have been executed by Alexander de Caix (d. 1819), the French bronze and ormolu manufacturer of Rupert Street, London employed both by Hope and George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV.
It would seem probable that Hope's cisterns (or their French prototype) inspired the design for a 'Mechanical Lamp for Dioptric Lights' by John Milne & Son, the leading Edinburgh brass manufacturers in 1840 (illustrated in A. Stevenson, Account of the Skerrypore Lighthouse, Edinburgh, 1848, fig. 22). One such stand bearing the 'Milne & Son, Edinburgh' brand was sold from the Collection of Richard Blakiston Houston, Bathune Castle, Co. Tyrone at Lyrath, Ireland, 15th September 1993, lot 83. Another was sold was sold Sotheby's London, 20 February 1987, lot 131 (illustrated in Partridge Fine Arts (Ltd.), Summer Exhibition Catalgoue, 1988, no. 17). A third, with original fitments, was acquired in 1868 for display at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
It would seem probable that Hope's cisterns (or their French prototype) inspired the design for a 'Mechanical Lamp for Dioptric Lights' by John Milne & Son, the leading Edinburgh brass manufacturers in 1840 (illustrated in A. Stevenson, Account of the Skerrypore Lighthouse, Edinburgh, 1848, fig. 22). One such stand bearing the 'Milne & Son, Edinburgh' brand was sold from the Collection of Richard Blakiston Houston, Bathune Castle, Co. Tyrone at Lyrath, Ireland, 15th September 1993, lot 83. Another was sold was sold Sotheby's London, 20 February 1987, lot 131 (illustrated in Partridge Fine Arts (Ltd.), Summer Exhibition Catalgoue, 1988, no. 17). A third, with original fitments, was acquired in 1868 for display at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.