LATE 18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Newby Hall was aggrandized by its owner William Weddell (d.1792) in the 1760's and 1770's. Weddell, a collector of ancient sculpture and paintings, was an early promoter of the neoclassical taste in England and suitably employed Robert Adam to supervise the renovations where Thomas Chippendale supplied 'a considble [sic.] part' of the furniture in the house. While it is tempting to attribute this cistern to the Chippendale workshop, this object cannot be identified in the complete inventory of the house taken by Thomas Chippendale Junior on the occasion of Weddell's death in 1792 (for a full discussion and inventory listing of Newby Hall, see J.Low, 'Newby Hall: Two Late Eighteenth-Century Inventories', Furniture History, 1986, pp.135-175). 'A large wood Cistern lin'd with lead' is listed in the Front Area and the Water House similarly lists 'A large cistern lined with lead', however these entries fail to describe this object's distinctive octagonal form (and the metal liner which may very well be original to the piece is not a lead one). By contrast, there is listed a 'mahogany Oval Cistern' in The Parlour.

The cistern is conceived in the Georgian 'antique' manner promoted by Adam, Chippendale and connoisseurs such as Weddell. Its woven reed sides in the fashion of a bacchic basket imitates contemporary French objects executed in ormolu. The fashion for octagonal cisterns was introduced in the 1770's and was promoted in A. Hepplewhite's pattern book The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide published in 1788. It is quite possible that this fashionable cistern was supplied to Weddell or Thomas Robinson who inherited the Newby property as a child and would have come to age in the early nineteenth century.