[23] Design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1773, possibly executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Ashburnham House, 19 Dover Street, London, for John, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham, c1773-76 (47)
      - Alternative design and design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1773 (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/128

Purpose

[23] Design for a ceiling for the first drawing room, 1773, possibly executed

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular, tripartite ceiling, with a central square compartment ornamented with a rosette enclosed within a circular band of guilloche, a band of fluting and a band of wreaths enclosing rosettes. Beyond this there are oval figurative scenes set with wreaths, and a further circular band of rosettes. Beyond this there are festoons which suspend arabesques and wreaths enclosing elliptical cameos. The central compartment is flanked by rectangular compartments ornamented with rosettes surrounded by festoons and calyx, and enclosed within roundels which form a continuous band. Each roundel is flanked by anthemia. The compartments are surrounded by bands of guilloche which enclose calyx

Scale

bar scale of ¾ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling of the 1.st Drawing room at Ashburnham House (underwritten in pencil) / 128

Signed and dated

1773
1773.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including Naples yellow, olive green, cerulean blue, and Indian red on laid paper (550 x 405)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Giuseppe Manocchi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 36
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 298
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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