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  • image SM Adam volume 24/195
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 24/195

Purpose

[1] Preliminary design for a chimneypiece and overmantel mirror frame, 1787

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece with cross-shaped styles, which are ornamented with rosettes surrounded by anthemia, support drop calyx and are bordered with bands of beading. The styles are flanked by figurative busts, which terminate in scrolls and are ornamented with arabesques, anthemia and paterae. The frieze is ornamented with a central mask, flanked by festoons of husks and with a blank tablet, which has an apron of guttae. Behind the tablet there is a band of fluting. Above the chimneypiece there is an elevation of an overmantel mirror frame, with styles containing arabesques, a frieze of fluting and capitals containing rosettes flanked by arabesques. The mirror glass is ornamented with a semi-circular compartment and festoons of husks, from which a peltoid shield, drop calyx and rosettes are suspended. The mirror frame is surmounted by a central urn, which is ornamented with gadrooning and a band of guilloche. The urn is surmounted by an anthemion and is flanked by winged sphinxes and further anthemia

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

193 and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • December 1787
    R Adam December. 18th. 1787.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and sepia wash on laid paper (257x208)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

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).