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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Scotland: Edinburgh, Edinburgh Assembly and Musical Society (designs for concert hall). Unfinished design for a coffered coved niche with pilasters, architrave and cornice at either end. In the spandrels above are winged victories.
  • image Adam vol.1/3

Reference number

Adam vol.1/3

Purpose

Scotland: Edinburgh, Edinburgh Assembly and Musical Society (designs for concert hall). Unfinished design for a coffered coved niche with pilasters, architrave and cornice at either end. In the spandrels above are winged victories.

Aspect

Elevationverso plan, perspective diagrams

Inscribed

Inscribed in black chalk in a contemporary hand Sketches of a Project for Edin'r

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1754/5

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil324 x 303

Hand

James Adam (attributed to)

Verso

Pencil design for the plan of a small U-shaped building and perspective diagrams.

Watermark

coat of arms [part]

Notes

In the opinion of A. A. Tait, this drawing relates in time and place or subject to those contained in Adam volume 7.This is probably a scheme for the Great Room in Edinburgh that occupied the Adam brothers around 1754/5; it was a hall for the Edinburgh Assembly and Musical Society (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, pp.126 and 346). This drawing is probably a detail of the niches shown in the section in Adam vol.1/4, itself an alternative for the central section shown in Adam vol.1/1; the drawing here may also be compared with the flanking wings in the section in Adam vol.1/1. The scheme involved all the Adam brothers: Robert was involved in it with John before his departure for Italy, when James replaced him. The painstaking draughtsmanship here is typical of James at this time. There are two drawings attributed to him for this project in Adam volume 7 (see Adam vol.7/194 and 225). Robert wrote from Italy in 1755 asking John to be told that 'I have been much on the observe with respect to concert rooms etc. But never have seen anything extraordinary in any shape as they perform mostly on the stages in play-houses . . . the few concert halls are quite plain without any coveing at all' (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4761). This interest may explain Adam's acquisition of a volume of theatre designs by Carlo Fontana (see A. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols., London, 1922, II, p.330).

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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