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  • image SM Adam volume 20/140

Reference number

SM Adam volume 20/140

Purpose

[32] Unfinished design for a mirror frame for the second drawing room, 1774, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a mirror frame ornamented with a band of anthemia and calyx, and a band of laurel leaf tips. The frame is surmounted by a central oval cameo which supports arabesques and rosettes bearing an anthemion. The cameo is flanked by pairs of armorial supporters in the form of greyhounds and cameos containing lekythoi. Above this there are panels containing anthemia, figurative roundels supporting anthemia, and further lekythoi

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Glass Frame for the 2.d Drawing Room at Ashburnham House / 140

Signed and dated

  • August 1774
    Adelphi / 25.t Aug.st 1774.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including violet and Indian yellow on laid paper (289 x 446)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly William Adam or Joseph Bonomi

Literature

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.

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).