Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [26] Variant design for the library

Browse

  • image SM 40/3/24

Reference number

SM 40/3/24

Purpose

[26] Variant design for the library

Aspect

Plan and laid-out wall elevations with added detail of profile of ? chimney-piece

Scale

bar scale of 3/10 of 1 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Robert Knight Esqr, Library

Signed and dated

  • 1802
    Lincolns Inn Fields / 1802

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, light red and blue washes, shaded, pricked for transfer on wove paper (530 x 695)

Hand

attributed to Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848), pupil and assistant May 1794 - September 1808

Notes

The variant part of the design lies with the west wall which in drawing [25] has a three-part division of shelves topped by niches. In this drawing there are five divisions, that is, three book stacks topped by niches and in between, two narrow elements each containing a tall niche (perhaps for a statue) and a shallow one at each base (perhaps for globes).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).