[5] Design for the south front of the house, 1789, possibly executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Ruscombe House, Berkshire, designs for alterations to a house and for offices for Sir James Eyre, 1789, possibly executed (12)
    - Designs for the west, north and south fronts of the house, 1789, possibly executed (5)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 29/64

Purpose

[5] Design for the south front of the house, 1789, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a two-and-a-half-storey, nine-bay building, with a flat roof, alternative forms of rustication at the ground storey level, and a string course of Vitruvian scroll. With a central projecting, polygonal bay, with a central recess, with a band of fluting at the first storey level and a band of enclosed anthemia at the second storey level. At roof level there is a central urn, flanked by recumbent sphinxes, linked by festoons. The first and ninth bays form projecting pavilions, with balustraded windows surmounted by oculi set within relieving arches at the first storey level. The pavilions are surmounted by pediments ornamented with paterae and bearing urns

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/4 to 10 feet

Inscribed

South Front of Ruscombe House, with an additional Bow to the staircase and a Circular Nich or Recess between / it and the present Bow window, which makes the [whole] (crossed through) front regular- The whole of the Basement story Rusticated / with projections at the East & West Ends, to correspond with the North and West Elevations-

Signed and dated

June 1789
Albemarle Street / 27. June 1789

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (482 x 300)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Daniel Robertson or Robert Morison

Verso

5 / Lord Chief Baron Eyre Ruscombe / 3 Ground Plan 2 Elevation 7 Offices 3 plans of decoration of Rooms / & 4 Elevation of the house in all 13 10 [_ _ _ _]

Watermark

Banded cartouche surmounted by a fleur-de-lis

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 27
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 393, pl. 556; Volume II, p. 13
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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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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