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  • image XF26
Model stand, English, unknown maker, c.1834, probably designed by Sir John Soane, shown in situ, ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photograph: Gareth Gardner

Model stand, English, unknown maker, c.1834, probably designed by Sir John Soane

Mahogany

Height (overall): 130cm
Height (base): 9cm
Width: 23cm
Depth: 28cm

Museum number: XF26

On display: Model Room (pre-booked tours only)
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house. For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit

Curatorial note

One of a pair with XF27. Mahogany, with square bases and tops; each with four columns in the form of bundles of reeds or fasces with plain collars above and below; bolt holes in the top of each base probably the remnants of fixings for models.

This pair of stands stand either side of the chimneypiece in the Model Room, as shown on the plan in the 1835 Description. On the upper shelves were displayed two of Soane’s collection of 20 white plaster-of-paris models by François Fouquet' of conjectural reconstructions of the Sepulchral Temple at Palmyra, Syria and the temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome and on the lower shelves were a pair of plaster models for monuments to Sir Simon and Lady Clarke by Soane’s friend John Flaxman. In effect, the display contrasts antique and modern memorials. These stands, along with XF27 must have been made after May 1834 when Soane purchased the Fouquet models from Edward Cresy.1 The four stands XF26, XF27, XF35 and XF104 are supremely elegant examples of Soane at his most restrained and ‘primitivist’.

In 2015 these model stands were reinstated in their original positions either side of the chimneypiece in the recreated Model Room as part of Phase 2 of Opening up the Soane.

1 SM Archive Office Day Book 15 May 1834 records payment of £100 for Cresy for the 20 models.


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