Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Alternative preliminary design and design, record drawing and finished drawing for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775 (4)

Browse

Purpose

Alternative preliminary design and design, record drawing and finished drawing for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775 (4)

Notes

As Tait notes, the second drawing room and the music room were probably conceived by Adam as one space, but divided into large and small areas.

The intricate ceiling Adam designed for the space survives in situ, along with the elaborate marble chimneypiece with its porcelain inserts. Unfortunately the overmantel mirror does not survive, but elements of applique ormolu ornamentation have been preserved, which Hussey and Oswald suggest were supplied by Matthew Boulton. The cut glass chandeliers also date from this period.

Harris notes the preliminary plan which indicates a screened arch at the south end of the room, which she compares to the interiors for the library at Kenwood. The arch of the screen does not survive and at a later date the columns were moved and raised up with pedestals.

King highlights plasterwork dating from a later period and questions whether the decorative mahogany panelling is original. The panelling matches the doors, suggesting it is part of the intended scheme, however it is unusual for an Adam design.

Level

Group

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 Alternative preliminary design and design, record drawing and finished drawing for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775 (4)