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Adam’s fine case was executed by Robert Ansell in painted wood, gesso and ormolu and included life-size figures of the muses Terpsichore and Euterpe, which flank the pipes. The figures were modelled in plaster and fitted by Richard Collins in 1777 and gilt bronze knobs, miniature versions of Adam’s door furniture, were supplied by Edward Gascoigne.
As one of only two surviving organ cases designed by Adam the piece is of extraordinary significance. The surviving Kedleston organ, which predates Sir Watkin’s, has undergone significant alteration and the piece designed for the Earl of Bute was destroyed in a fire. The fate of Adam’s remaining organ cases, if ever executed, is not known.
The Williams-Wynn organ was removed from 20 St. James’s Square in 1864 by the 6th Baronet of Wynnstay, who spent little time at his London residence. At Wynnstay it was altered by Gray and Davison who inserted a ‘hydraulic blowing machine’, before the instrument was installed in the gallery of Wynnstay’s great hall. In 1946 Wynnstay, along with its fixtures and fittings, were sold to Lindisfarne College. Following a liquidation sale the organ was purchased in April 1995 for the National Museum of Wales.
Significantly, the organ case retains some of its original paintwork scheme of light green, blue, and purple, matching the ceiling and wall treatment for the music room at 20 St James’s Square. The organ contains Snetzler’s great and swell organs which comprise of around 1,270 pipes and the instrument is still in playing order.
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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).