[3] Alternative design for the ground storey of a house, 1783, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Projects known only by patron
  - Earl of Findlater, designs for a town house for an unknown location, possibly Portland Place, London, c1783, unexecuted (17)
    - Designs and finished drawings for the basement, ground, first and attic storeys of a house, c1783, unexecuted (10)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 36/40

Purpose

[3] Alternative design for the ground storey of a house, 1783, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the ground storey of a five-by-five-bay building with the central three bays of the west and east fronts receding. The west front contains a central, stepped entrance, with a circular portico. This leads to a hall, with columnar screens to the north and south, and niches in the eastern wall. To the north of the hall there is a curved, bifurcated staircase, and to the south there is an apsidal-ended, screened space, which contains a further curved staircase. The rooms to the north contain an apsidal-ended eating room, an octagonal ante-room, and a drawing room. At the rear of the house, across the central three bays, there is a salon or dining room with three apsidal sides. To the south, there is a colonnaded library, a bedchamber, dressing room, oval powdering room, water closet, and a circular staircase

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/4 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

2d Design of the Principal Story of a [Farm] (crossed through in pencil) house for the Earl of Findlater (in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) / Town (pencil) / Portico / Hall / Great Stairs / Eating room / Anti room or / Breakfast room / Drawing room / Salon or Great / Dining room / 48 by 24 / 36 within the Niches / Library / Bed Chamber / Dressing room / Powd.r room / Water Closet / Back stairs / 20 (red ink) some dimensions given and some calculations (pencil)

Signed and dated

August 1783
Adelphi / 22 August 1783

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (512 x 322)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Verso

(cropped) [_]later / (cropped) 1783(?) / no 5

Watermark

J KOOL surmounted by fluer-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 103-4, Index, p. 45
Rowan, 1985, p. 138
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 57, 102-6, 130, pl. 115
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Robert Adam's London, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 30 November 2016 - 11 March 2017

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).