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Preliminary design and working drawings for a commode in the drawing room, 1773, executed with alterations (6)

Notes

The designs for the elevation of the commode were executed with alterations to the ornamental details, and rather than being painted, it was executed in deal, and veneered with hardwood, satinwood and rosewood, and also ormolu. The design for the slab (Adam volume 18/63) was executed exactly in accordance with Adam's drawing. There is no extant drawing for the entire commode.

There are two commodes which survive in situ in the drawing room at Osterley, which are attributed alternatively to Ince and Mayhew or Linnell. They are hollow, and have no doors, being merely ornamentation to the wall. They incorporate marquetry medallions thought to have been made by Christopher Fürlong. The central medallion is a copy in marquetry of a painting by Angelica Kauffman: Venus explaining to Cupid the Torch of Hymen. The flanking oval medallions which depict female figures probably relate to designs made by Kauffman's husband, Antonio Zucchi.

Adam designed a similar commode in 1773 for the Duke of Bolton at Bolton House (SM Adam volume 17/18).

Further to the mirror frames and commodes, other furniture within the drawing room includes a tripod candle stand, possibly designed by Adam, and seat furniture which was probably designed by Linnell.

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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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Contents of Preliminary design and working drawings for a commode in the drawing room, 1773, executed with alterations (6)