[36] Design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1772, as executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - St James's Square, number 20, London, designs for a house and interiors for Watkin Williams-Wynn, c1772-1777 (99)
      - Design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1772, as executed (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/51

Purpose

[36] Design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1772, as executed

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular ceiling with an apse. The ceiling is ornamented with a central patera enclosed within oval bands of fluting, of anthemia and calyx, and of Vitruvian scroll. Beyond this there is an oval band of arabesques and rosettes enclosed within bands of reed and ribbon, and this is surrounded by rosettes and festoons of calyx, which are segmented by medallions set within wreaths of reed and ribbon. All this is set within an oval band of enclosed anthemia flanked by further bands of reed and ribbon. The corners of the ceiling are ornamented with festoons of calyx, which suspend arabesques and cameos with aprons of scrolled hearts and anthemia. The apse is bordered by bands of guilloche and a band of calyx, and it is ornamented with a part-patera enclosed within bands of swags and part-rosettes, and of Vitruvian scroll. Beyond this there are radiating compartments bordered by calyx and containing rosettes and festoons suspending medallions and drop calyx

Scale

bar scale of ½ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling of the first Drawing room at Sir Watkin Wynn’s in S.t James’s Square / 51 / A measures one foot (pencil) / faint pencil inscriptions

Signed and dated

1772
Adelphi / 1772

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including olive green, pink, verdigris and Prussian blue on laid paper (608 x 449)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 49
King, 2001, Volume I, pp. 94, 277
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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.

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