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  • image SM volume 109/56 and 57

Reference number

SM volume 109/56 and 57

Purpose

[8/8] Finished design for one of the pair of officers' ranges, shown in plan on 109/55

Aspect

Plan and elevation, the elevation with some details in steep perspective view

Scale

20 feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

in pen and brown ink by John James with dimensions of plan

Signed and dated

  • Undated but datable 1711

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink with grey wash; on laid paper, joined by compiler of volume to 109/55 at top of sheet; 345 x 495

Hand

John James

Watermark

Strasbourg Lily / LVG

Notes

This larger scale drawing offers evidence for the hand of John James in its precise ink drawing, the handwriting of the inscriptions and the form of the scale bar (compare examples at Drawer 43/5/32 and 33). A characteristic of this hand is the heavy marking of the divider or compass point.

The elevation is notable for the simple, block-like handling of plinths, round-headed door architraves and floor bands. The arched windows of the officers' range are without dressings. The whole range was probably intended for construction in brick, with dressings in stone. Each officer's apartment has a principal heated room, and a smaller room and closet, presumably for bedroom and garderobe.

Literature

Wren Society, VI, pl. 46, right

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).