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  • image SM Adam volume 14/25
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 14/25

Purpose

[20] Alternative design for a ceiling for the drawing room, 1778, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular, tripartite ceiling, with an apsidal compartment on one long side. The central square compartment is ornamented with a figurative roundel, enclosed within bands of calyx and of enclosed flora and beading, which forming concave lozenges. This has aprons of festoons of beading, which suspend further roundels and peltoid shields, and all this is enclosed within bands of guilloche. Beyond, there are figurative segmental roundels flanked by bands of enclosed anthemia and corner rosettes. The central compartment is flanked by rectangular compartments ornamented with further roundels, encircled by a band of enclosed anthemia, and each separated by rosettes, calyx, tubular flowers and anthemia. The compartments are bordered by a continuous hexagonal band, enclosing rosettes, and bands of guilloche. The apsidal compartment is ornamented with part-paterae set within fans ornamented with enclosed anthemia. These are linked by concave bands of enclosed anthemia and beading, which have aprons of beaded festoons suspending roundels. Beyond this there are semi-circular bands of scrolled hearts, guilloche, and enclosed anthemia segmented by rosettes

Scale

bar scale of 1 inch to 2 feet

Inscribed

Design of a Cieling for the Drawing room at Mistley. not executed / 25

Signed and dated

  • 1778
    Adelphi / 1778.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including Indian yellow, yellow ochre, pink, verdigris and Indian red (590 x 447)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 22
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 249
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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).