[16] Design for a chimneypiece for the library, 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)
      - Designs for a chimneypiece for the library, 1773, possibly executed (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 23/22

Purpose

[16] Design for a chimneypiece for the library, 1773, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece with a lining bordered with a band of laurel leaf tips. The pilaster stiles are ornamented with a band of wreaths suspended from ribbons and enclosing rosettes. The capitals contain urns set within paterae and surrounded by calyx. The frieze is ornamented with a band of arabesques, alternatively supporting anthemia and calyx. There is a central tablet containing a figurative oval enclosed within an olive leaf band, and this is flanked by rosettes, drop calyx and pedestals supporting urns bearing anthemia. Above the frieze there are bands of laurel leaf tips

Scale

bar scale of 1 ¼ inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Library (underwritten in pencil) / It is proposed to introduce Some of Messr Widgwood (sic) & Bentleys Works into this Chimney / & the ornaments may be done Colourd in Scagliola by Richter(?) & Bartoli(?) / if Lord Ashburnham choses it- / 22 and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

1773
1773.

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (346 x 252)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 36
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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