[27] Alternative unfinished design for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1773, unexecuted

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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 preliminary design and unfinished designs for a ceiling for the second drawing room, c1773 (3)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/130

Purpose

[27] Alternative unfinished design for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1773, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular ceiling ornamented with a central figurative roundel, set within a circular band of enclosed rosettes and a band of guilloche. Beyond this there is an oval compartment with fan-like ornamentation adorned with anthemia and calyx, and all this is set within an oval band of Vitruvian scroll. Beyond this there are peltoid shields and roundels suspended by drop calyx, and these are flanked by recumbent winged sphinxes and arabesques, all linked with semi-circular bands of calyx. All of this is set within an oval band of oak leaves, segmented by figurative panels, a panel containing arabesques, calyx and rosettes, and by wreaths enclosing cameos set within a band of rosettes. Beyond this there are festoons of husks, and the corners are ornamented with arabesques and scrolled hearts

Scale

bar scale of ¾ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling of the 2.d Drawing room at Ashburnham House- / not executed / 130

Signed and dated

May 1771
Adelphi / 25.t May / 1771 / 25. (cropped)

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (445 x 360)

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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