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  • image SM 28/1/9

Reference number

SM 28/1/9

Purpose

[4] Alternative preliminary design, March-April 1784

Aspect

No 3 (Baldwin) and (Bailey) Plan of the Principal Floor design No 3 showing a four-part, rectangular plan with a semicircular porch and the offices as blocks on either side and without courts; (verso) rough (feint pencil) plan for kitchen offices with the house also indicated, this having a transverse, stretched elliptical centre with the apsidal ends projecting front and back - the first indication of the final plan form and see also verso of drawing 7

Scale

bar scale of 1/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, labelled (Baldwin) Porch, Vestibule, Closet, Eating Parlor, Drawing Room, Library, Stables & Coachhouse, (left-hand side) Kitchen Offices and dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • (added later by Bailey) 1784

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia and black washes within black ruled and sepia wash border on laid paper (360 x 529)

Hand

BALDWIN, Robert (fl. 1762--1787), draughtsman
Drawings 1-8 have all been attributed to Robert Baldwin (fl. 1762-c.1804). The inscription of drawing 1 and the numbering of subsequent drawings are in his hand as are the room labels. Other drawings from Soane's early practice also attributed to Baldwin include drawings made for the dairy at Hammels Park, Blackfriars Bridge in Norwich and Letton Hall (q.q.q.v). All made in 1783-4 when Soane (who was without office help until he acquired his first pupil in September 1784) relied on ad hoc assistance from Baldwin. The rendered drawings (elevations) made for Saxlingham were evidently done in a hurry, lacking Baldwin's usual finesse but with his favoured green washes.

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and LVG below

Level

Drawing

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

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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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