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Rough preliminary designs for a sofa for the north wall of the library, c1768-69, executed with alterations (2)

Notes

Mirror frames similar to those shown here were executed for the recesses in the library by William France in 1770, with French glass supplied by Thomas Chippendale in 1769 for £340. These were similar to the mirrors produced by Adam for the dining room at Mellerstain, but they were removed in 1815 when the recesses were filled with bookcases. The mirror frames now in the recesses are replicas.

The sofas were executed by William France in 1770, and were sold in 1922, but the design for their legs, which were removed in the nineteenth century, is unknown. The only Adam furniture for the library which remains in situ are the pier glasses, curtain cornices, and chimneypiece, all of which were carved by John Devall.

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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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Contents of Rough preliminary designs for a sofa for the north wall of the library, c1768-69, executed with alterations (2)