This type of oval cistern, intended to stand beneath a sideboard table, and designed in the 'antique' manner of a Roman Bath, with tapering sides, derived from one illustrated in Robert Adam's, Works in Architecture, 1774, vol.1, no.1, and reprinted in 1822. The applied reeded balusters, in the Grecian manner, on tapering columnar feet relates to patterns published in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker's and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, 1791-4. A related sarcophagus cistern was illustrated by O. Brackett, An Encyclopedia of English Furniture, 1927, p.281.