This impressive George I cistern, shaped like a wine-krater vase with bacchic lion-mask handles, bears the engraved armorials of George Cholmondeley, 4th Earl of Cholmondeley (d. 1827) before his advancement to the marquessate of Cholomondeley in 1815. It may have been commissioned, however, by his great great uncle Hugh Cholmondeley, 1st Earl of Cholmondeley (d. 1724) who had served as Groom of the Bedchamber to King William III. It is likely to have been commissioned as part of his buffet or sideboard-table display for Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire, which he aggrandised in the decade following his elevation to the Earldom in 1706. Its late 17th Century form, together with the lion-masks corresponds to silver basins or cisterns, such as that executed by Ralphe Leeke in 1698 en suite with a water fountain-vase (the latter was displayed at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire in the 18th Century (G. Wilson, 'The Kedleston Fountain', The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 1983, pp. 1-12 and figs. 7 & 8)). The execution of such silver French-plated or close-plated copper-ware formed part of the trade of the leading goldsmiths. Related table ware including a cistern, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is discussed in R. Gentle and R. Feild, Domestic Metalwork 1640-1820, Woodbridge, 1994, p. 319, fig. 4.