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  • image SM Adam volume 21/169
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/169

Purpose

Preliminary design for a chimney grate, ND

Aspect

Rough elevation of a fire grate with four bases ornamented with oval figurative medallions, enclosed drops of calyx, guilloche and Greek key, surmounted by obelisks ornamented with faux hieroglyphs in the outer bays, and the central bay supported the fire basket, with a turned bar, and has a pyramid-shaped back ornamented with Egyptian-esque figurative ornament, surmounted by sphinxes carrying a flaming urn, and flanked by tapering columns ornamented with masks, winged sphinxes and flaming urns

Scale

not to scale

Signed and dated

  • ND

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (235x162)

Hand

Probably Adam, Robert (1728--1792) - Collections, architect
Robert Adam

Notes

This drawing was pasted into a series of funerary monument designs by William Adam when he created the Adam volumes in the early nineteenth century. It is clear to see why such an error might have been made, and yet the design is also very obviously a fire grate, with the central elevated fire basket.

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).