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  • image SM Adam volume 49/39
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 49/39

Purpose

[97] Unfinished design for a sedan chair for Lady Williams-Wynn, c1774, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a sedan chair with a base ornamented with winged sphinxes and an anthemion flanked by arabesques. Above this there are semi-circular bands of rosettes set within calyx wreaths and of calyx, a band of arabesques supporting rosettes alternating with anthemia, and festoons suspending cameos and roundels. There is a central band of Vitruvian scroll, with a draped window and an ornamental panel above. The panel contains a ram’s mask suspending festoons and flanked by winged sphinxes, with a cameo set within a wreath of calyx, scrolled hearts and tubular flowers supporting urns above. The urns are linked with semi-circular bands of calyx, and above this there is an anthemion flanked by arabesques in the form of scrolled hearts, further tubular flowers, rosettes and anthemia. The chair has a domed roof with an apron of enclosed calyx, and it is surmounted by swans, arabesques, a band calyx, and a central urn. The chair poles are ornamented with fluting, bands of guilloche, rosettes and arabesques, and they terminate in ram masks

Scale

bar scale of 1 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Chair for Lady Williams Wynne (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

  • c1774
    c1774

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including Indian yellow, verdigris and pink on laid paper (542 x 370)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 50
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.

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).