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  • image SM Adam volume 3/89

Reference number

SM Adam volume 3/89

Purpose

[11] Preliminary design for an overmantel mirror for the octagonal dressing room, possibly as executed, c1786

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece, with herm stiles, surmounted by an overmantel mirror with stiles containing a peltoid shields, arabesques, festoons and rosettes, and flanked by tapering herms. The mirror is surmounted by a central urn, flanked by reclining putti. Above all this is a faint pencil elevation of a clock

Scale

bar scale of 1 ½ inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

(in pencil) Glass frame over Octagon room Chimney / £ done according to the Design £15.4.0 / £ the 3/[_ _ _ _] ornaments are [_ _ _ _ _ _ _] / 9.11.0 / £ the 3 [_ _ _ _] ornaments & the Ornts / [_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _ _ _ _] / 5.19.0 / (and in ink) bottom of dial frame and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c1786
    c1786

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (465 x 289)

Hand

Possibly
Robert Adam

Watermark

PORTAL & BRIDGES

Literature

Miele, 1998, p. 163
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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).