[15] Design for a ceiling for the dining room, 1778, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Mistley Hall and Village, Essex, for the Rt. Hon. Richard Rigby, c1774-82 (34)
    - Design for a ceiling for the dining room or a variant design for the drawing room, 1778, unexecuted (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 14/26

Purpose

[15] Design for a ceiling for the dining room, 1778, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of a tripartite, rectangular ceiling, with a canted bay on one long side. The central compartment is ornamented with a central figurative roundel depicting winged putti pulling a chariot. This is enclosed within an oval fan ornamented with arabesques, calyx and rosettes. Beyond this, there is an oval band ornamented with scrolled hearts, formed with a semi-circular band of beading, and enclosing fauna. The band is segmented by corner cameos and has an apron of festoons, with corner wreaths suspending peltoid shields and rosettes. The central compartment is flanked by panels containing a central cameo, flanked by thyrsi surmounted by balusters supporting urns bearing anthemia and winged sphinxes forming grotesques. The canted bay is ornamented with a figurative half-roundel, depicting a reclining figure drawn in a chariot, pulled by a lion bearing a winged putto. This is enclosed within a fan, with a semi-circular band of scrolled hearts beyond. Each compartment is bordered with a band of Vitruvian scroll

Scale

bar scale of 1 inch to 2 feet

Inscribed

Cieling for the Dining room at Mistley not executed / 26.

Signed and dated

1778
Adelphi / 1778-

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (522 x 424)

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.

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