Working drawing for a three-part, pedimented window, 27 July 1791

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Chilton Lodge, Chilton Foliat, Berkshire: (executed) house for William Morland, 1791 and greenhouse for John Pearse, 1796 or later (5)

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Reference number

SM 77/4/6

Purpose

Working drawing for a three-part, pedimented window, 27 July 1791

Aspect

4 Plan, elevation, section and details, (verso) unfinished (pencil) full size details for a cornice (with scribbled cancellation marks) and panelling that includes two upright ovals (re-used from the demolished house?)

Scale

1/9 inch to one foot approximatedly and full size

Inscribed

for Chilton Park ^Lodge July 27.1791, All the Heights not given must be / regulated by the old Sash frames proposed / to be used, A projects (added in pencil)^beforeB ½ inch / C projects before D ½ inch / E projects before F 1½ inch, omit the bed mould[ing] in the / Pediment, This window is / to contain one / pane of equal / dimensions with / the panes of / the Center wind_ow, The side / sashes should / be in two in (sic) / height but / left prepared / for hanging / only, sunk 3 inches, labelled AA BB CD FEF and G; (right-hand side) Depth of the Tympanum, Section through the / Center of the window G / shewing the Mouldings / at large, Error this must / be 2 inches, must be / 1½ and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

Great Scotland Yard and Copy July 27 1791 (and dated again as above)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia and yellow washes on wove paper with two fold marks (565 x 682)

Hand

Soane, dated by an office hand probably Frederick Meyer's (pupil 1791-6)

Notes

The best known type of tripartite window is termed Palladian (but also called a Venetian window or a Serliana) and consists of a central opening that is arched and wider than the side openings which have flat heads.
Drawings 1 and 3 show several pedimented tripartite windows together with a single-light version. In those drawing, the pediments are the full width of the window and the mouldings are plain (square-cut). Both types have an arresting detail which is a 12 x 5 inches plain 'triglyph'. However, the working drawing catalogued here modifies the details so that the centre opening of a tripartite window has a moulded pediment and each pilaster has a vestigial capital - the starker and more Soanean design is lost.
Soane's office Day Book for 27 and 28 July 1791 has an entry by Meyers 'Copying working drawing / of Venetian Window to / Chilton lodge' . Thus the office retained the drawing by Soane and a copy was dispatched to the builder; an entry for the following day has 'M^rMorland / Left at M^rPiper's a / drawing & Section of / the Venetian Window / to Chilton Lodge'.

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).