Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [1] Design for the ground floor of a house, 1790, executed to a variant design

Browse

  • image SM Adam volume 31/65

Reference number

SM Adam volume 31/65

Purpose

[1] Design for the ground floor of a house, 1790, executed to a variant design

Aspect

Ground plan of a house with an entrance portico on one side and rooms flanking a central staircase and hall. Rooms include bedrooms, a servants’ hall, staircase, kitchen, scullery, study for Macpherson and a housekeeper’s room. The different colour washes denote the existing (pink) and proposed (black) fabric

Scale

bar scale of 1 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Ground Story of Balaville House / (and in the hand of William Adam) the Seat of / James McPherson Esqr / (in another hand) A / (in pencil) Men Servants / Bedroom / Servants Hall / Staircase / Kitchen / Scullery / (in pen) Pantry / Larder / Bedroom / Mr Mc.phersons / Study / Hall / (in pencil) House Keepers room / Maids Bedroom / (in pen) Maids room / Old / Old / Old / Old / Old / Old / Old / Old / Window / The old shades red, but in / Plans delivered to Mr. M.pherson / The old is shaded dark & the / new Red. / This is the right Copy with some room dimensions / (verso) 3

Signed and dated

  • 12/1/1790
    Albemarle Street / 12. Jany. 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and pink coloured wash on laid paper (473x274)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison

Watermark

J WHATMAN

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 30
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).