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Preliminary design for a font for St Mary's Church, Ruabon, 1772, as executed (1)

Notes

This design for a font was the only Adam design for Sir Watkin which was executed in Ruabon. The font was presented to St Mary's Church by Sir Watkin in 1772 on the occasion of the christening of his son (the future 5th Baronet). (See scheme notes).

Attached to this drawing is a note in the hand of Sir John Summerson:
Font in Ruabon Parish Church. I visited the Church at Ruabon on Oct. 17th 1948 & noticed a good font consisting of a marble urn (with cora) on a wooden tripod. The well bore the inscription: 'Presented by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn Bt. to the Church of Ruabon on the baptism of his son, 1772'. Its design was so characteristic of R. Adam's work that I subsequently went through the drawings here where I found a very similar design inscribed 'Copy of a font for Sir Watkin Williams Winn' (undated, & with pencilled notes on it) which, although its details are slightly different, leaves us no doubt that the Ruabon font was designed by Adam. JS

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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.

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Contents of Preliminary design for a font for St Mary's Church, Ruabon, 1772, as executed (1)