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Lot Essay
This George II oval cistern, with shallow mahogany sides banded with brass ribbons, would have been on a tall-legged frame such as the one filled with wine-bottles and glasses that appeared in J. Zoffany's 1781 portrait of the Ferguson Group (R. Edwards, Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1977, p. 640). Its 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 (ibid., p. 639).
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 (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, pp. 135 and 236, and vol. II, pp. 78-9, pls. 120-3)
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 (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, pp. 135 and 236, and vol. II, pp. 78-9, pls. 120-3)