A PAIR OF RARE CHINESE IMARI ARMORIAL WALL CISTERNS AND COVERS

The arms are those of Brydges impaling Willoughby and Middleton. James Brydges, then Baron Brydges, married Cassandra Willoughby, and was created Duke of Chandos in 1719. A very large and elaborate dinner service was commissioned for the Duke and his wife soon after he received his dukedom. It is likely that at least four, possibly even six or eight, cisterns were included in the service, and they would originally have been accompanied by fluted basins. They were either for holding drinking water, or for washing hands. See David S. Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, London 1974, p. 181, and The Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994, no. 252, p. 215, for a single cistern and cover from the Hodroff Collection, which was formerly in the C. H. Bullivant Collection and was sold in the Bullivant Sale, Phillips, London, 22 March 1988, lot 35; it was later sold in our New York rooms, 1 & 2 September 2009, lot 444. For another cistern and cover, or possibly the same, see Sir Algernon Tudor-Craig, Armorial Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1925, p. 36. The covers of all the above-mentioned cisterns are lacking the dolphin tail and s...