[24] Finished drawing for the second storey of the library, c1788, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
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  - King's College, Cambridge, designs for a chapel altar, new college buildings and a library, 1768-88, unexecuted (28)
    - Design and finished drawings for the third scheme for the library, c1778, unexecuted (5)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 31/21

Purpose

[24] Finished drawing for the second storey of the library, c1788, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the second-storey of a seven-by-eleven-bay building with a bow front set behind a columnar screen. To the rear there is a recessed, central, canted front, and single bays in the centre of the eastern and western sides of the building project and contain staircases. The central portion of the building is formed with an octagonal room at the front of the building and a circular room to the rear. These are linked via single bay links and a central octagonal room, which connect to the right and left-hand wings via link bays. The principal rooms all contain bookcases

Scale

bar scale of 3/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the two pair Story / (and in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) of a Library for Kings College Cambridge / Library / 24 wide / 102 ft long / Library / 24 wide / Library / 30 D.m / 17 D.m / Library 33 D.m / Library / 24 wide / 102 ft long / Library 24 wide / No. 33 (pencil)

Signed and dated

c1788
c1788

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (361 x 493)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with part title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

Fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Notes

4 / 4 / Library for Kings College Cambridge / (and in the hand of Willima Adam, brown ink) This to be Placed Third

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 173-79; Index, p. 6
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 54
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).