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Notes
This design is a duplicate of that designed by Adam in 1766 for the library in the home of Ellis Cunliffe in Wimbledon (Adam volume 22/166). The Cunliffe design is inscribed in pencil with the words, Parlor DY / 3d House, suggesting that Adam had considered reusing it in a parlour at the Adelphi, although he had perhaps originally intended it for another house. It is not known if this design was executed as there is no known photographic record of the chimneypiece prior to demolition.
The inscription on this drawing: And Back Parlor / 8t. House River front suggests that the design was intended to be duplicated in the back ground-floor room at number 7 Royal Terrace. This may have been the case, but this cannot be confirmed as there is no photographic record of that chimneypiece prior to demolition.
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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.
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).