Design for the library, c1775, as executed (1)

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Home House, Portman Square, number 17 (now 20), London, for the Countess of Home, 1775-78 (73)

Purpose

Design for the library, c1775, as executed (1)

Notes

Positioned to the rear of the ground floor there is a library which is square in form. The space is more intimate in design and could be entered from the stairwell. Here Harris notes the survival on another Wyatt ceiling, albeit considerably altered by Adam. Adam inserts twelve portrait medallions of modern greats, which include Sir Francis Drake, Sir Isaac Newton, and even one of Robert Adam himself.

There survives a carved chimneypiece ornamented with mathematical and scientific instruments, alongside the Home coat of arms.

Adam introduces plasterwork elements to the space alongside the overmantel which contains a painted piece signed by Antonio Zucchi and dated to 1776. The painting is a representative history, with portraits of King Alfred and Queen Elizabeth I.

Level

Group

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).

Contents of Design for the library, c1775, as executed (1)

[18] Design for the library, c1775, as executed