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  • image SM, volume 110/55

Reference number

SM, volume 110/55

Purpose

[2] Design for a doorcase with a segmental pediment on angled consoles and a combined tympanum and frieze with swags of fruit and flower, possibly for the King's Bedchamber

Aspect

Elevation, incomplete on left

Scale

Drawn scale: 1 foot to just under 1 inch, or 24.5mm (4 feet to 3 15/16 inch)

Inscribed

In ink by George Dance at bottom right, Gd, and to right by a C19 hand, (54), altered from 55.

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but probably c.1693-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over graphite under-drawing, with warm grey wash and some additions in graphite, including scale bar; on laid paper; two small areas of pinkish-brown staining at top of sheet; 428 x 290

Hand

Gibbons

Watermark

Countermark: CDG

Notes

The design is to the same scale as the other four in this group (110/54, 56, 57), and the door opening is the same size as 1, above (110/57). As the King's Bedchamber is the only room in the suite of apartments with 4-feet-wide door openings, it could either be an alternative for 110/57, or a design for the doorcase to the opening at the rear of the room, connecting with the Gallery (used by William as a Council Chamber). The height of the dado rail is the same as for 110/54 and 57. Only the King's Bedchamber had 4-feet-wide door openings and dado rails 2 feet 6 inches high.The design has a similar canted console to that on 110/54. The spatial relationship between the door frame and outer architrave is the same as on 110/57. However, the door frame and overall frame width architrave are both narrower on this design (5 inches and 9 ½ inches compared with 6 ½ and 11 inches) and the door surround is also simpler than 110/57. This could indicate that it was intended for the less prominent rear door opening. The scale bar divisions are like those on 110/66, that is, a foot divided into quarters, with a longer stroke on the half division.

Literature

Wren Society, IV, pl. 41, top right

Level

Drawing

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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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