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- 51 Sent to Pearce May 27th 1786
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52 See also drawing 11 (plan and wall elevations with details) in which the ceiling design is the same as the one shown here. Attributed to John McDonnell, Soane's second pupil who joined the drawing office on 18 March 1786. His drawing is somewhat uncertain, the dimensions and and instructions to the plasterer written upside down.
53 Chimney-piece A has a Vitruivian scroll decoration to the frieze and the jambs have flutes with a small leaf ornament. Chimney-piece B has festoons and urns in the frieze and a drop to each jamb. Chimney-piece C has swags decorating the frieze and heart-shaped leaves on the left jamb or an alternative drop on the right. Chimney-piece D has a bell-flower, bead and ribbon festoon with drops. The chimney-pieces for three or four of the most important rooms were to be entirely made in London, while the ornament for the remainder was also made in London.
54 McDonnell draws the bell-flowers (sometimes called husks) with a flourish.
55 Another drawing attributed to McDonnell.
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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.
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).