[34] Unfinished design for a ceiling for the second library, 1777, possibly executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Roxburghe House, Hanover Square, London, designs for a house and interiors for John Ker, 3rd Duke of Roxburghe, c1775-79 (55)
      - Unfinished design for a ceiling for the second library, 1777, possibly executed (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 14/31

Purpose

[34] Unfinished design for a ceiling for the second library, 1777, possibly executed

Aspect

Plan of a square ceiling flanked by two rectangular compartments. The ceiling is ornamented with a central figurative roundel set within circular bands, a band of enclosed calyx supporting anthemia, and further circular bands. Beyond this there are rosettes set within roundels, with aprons of arabesques and flora, all set within a lozenge-shaped compartment bordered by reed and ribbon. Beyond the compartment there are festoons which suspend figurative ovals set within wreaths, and all this is bordered by bands of Vitruvian scroll and flanked by strip compartments ornamented with calyx. The rectangular compartment to the left is bordered by bands of anthemia enclosed within guilloche. The rectangular compartment to the right is bordered with a continuous band of enclosed calyx

Scale

bar scale of ½ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling for the second Library room at Roxbughe House / L green (pencil) / purple (pencil) / White (pencil) / Pink (?) & green (pencil) / white (pencil) / purple(?) (pencil) / l green (pencil) / white (pencil) / Light green (pencil) / Practically all carried out (modern curatorial hand, Arthur Bolton, pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

December 1777
Adelphi / 31.st Dec.r 1777.

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (417 x 312)

Hand

Probably
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 39
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 293
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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