[19] Working drawing for ornamentation in the Rotunda, 7 September 1795

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1356)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (431)
      - Rotunda, 1794-95 (30)

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Reference number

SM volume 74/103a

Purpose

[19] Working drawing for ornamentation in the Rotunda, 7 September 1795

Aspect

(Soane) Plan of part of the / Window and part-elevation; (verso) rough pencil details of fret pattern

Scale

bar scales

Inscribed

as above, Make D equal to half E F, D, E, F, Stone, (office hand) A, A. The width of this Ribbon / to be exactly the same as / that around the (underlined) Stone Arches, The Bank of England and dimensions given, (verso) Stone Fascia

Signed and dated

Lincolns Inn Fields Sep^r 7^th 1795

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

This drawing, SM volume 74/102a and SM volume 74/104 show variants of the Greek key pattern and wavy line incised into the plaster around the windows and in the ribs of the dome. Erasure marks on SM volume 74/102a show that ornamentation was initially intended in an arcade form around the room. Soane's colleagues took issue with the surface application of Soane's novel ornamentation, stating in 'The Modern Goth' (1796) his decorative style resembled 'scor'd loins of pork'.

Literature

A.T. Bolton, The Portrait of Sir John Soane, RA, London, 1927. pp. 62-65.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).