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  • image SM Adam volume 20/109

Reference number

SM Adam volume 20/109

Purpose

[20] Design for a commode and a pier glass, 1778

Aspect

Elevation of a segmental commode, with the central portion projecting, and with a base rail ornamented with connected enclosed rosettes, and with a top rail ornamented with enclosed anthemia, with an apron of festoons supporting a large oval medallion. The commode is surmounted by a tripartite pier glass frame, articulated by terms, supporting arched tops composed of festoons, lower in the side bays, and surmounted by arabesques and anthemia, and the central bay is surmounted by a cameo enclosed within a wreath, flanked by festoons, and surmounted by an urn

Scale

bar scale of 2 1/4 inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Glass and Commode for G. Keate Esqr. and some measurements given in pencil

Signed and dated

  • 1778
    1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (156 x 445)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Watermark

GR surmounted by fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 36
Harris, 1963, pp. 54, 77
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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).