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Notes
It is not known if this design was executed as there is no known photographic record of the chimneypiece prior to demolition.
This design is a close variant of that designed by Adam in 1766 for a bedchamber in the home of James Stuart Mackenzie (Adam volume 22/161). The Mackenzie design is inscribed in pencil with the words, Parlor / 2d House / DY, corresponding with the intended location of this design
This design is inscribed as also being for the back parlour at number 2 Royal Terrace, but it cannot have been executed there as the chimneypiece from that room was sold at auction in 1936, and the auction catalogue described as being to a different design: 'A painted pine chimneypiece with fluted, frieze, the central panel [tablet] with urn surmounted by 2 sphinxes and draped sashes, the scroll trussed jambs [stiles] with female mask medallions above.'
Level
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).