These George II oval cisterns, with unusually shallow mahogany sides banded with brass ribbons would have been on tall-legged frames such as the one filled with wine-bottles and glasses that appeared in J. Zoffany's 1781 portrait of the Ferguson Group (see: R. Edwards, Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1977, p. 640). Their decorative ormolu handles, in the form of bacchic ring-bearing lion-masks, correspond to a pattern that was possibly invented by the court cabinet-maker Benjamin Goodison (d. 1767) and feature on the cistern with satyr-headed lion feet at Althorp, Northamptonshire, which he is thought to have supplied in about 1730 (R. Edwards, op.cit., p. 639). These wine-cistern, intended to accompany sideboard tables, are likely to have been commissioned by James Eliot (d. 1742) following the building of the dining-room at Port Eliot which he inherited in 1722, while their pedestals, fitted with pot-cupboards, would have been substituted by Edward, 1st Lord Eliot (d. 1804). Such brass-enriched cisterns later featured in the documented work of Thomas Chippendale (d. 1787) and in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1763 (see: C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 135 and 236, and vol. 2, pp. 78-9, pls. 120-3)