[30] Preliminary design for acroteria, by George Dance, February 1796

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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)
      - Lothbury and Bartholomew Lane screen walls, 1794-1797 (66)

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Reference number

SM volume 42/187

Purpose

[30] Preliminary design for acroteria, by George Dance, February 1796

Aspect

Half-elevation of a scrolled acroterion with (pencil) scallop shell in the centre and small number diagram for the scroll's proportions and section

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

dimension of 4 : 4 ½ and calculations

Signed and dated

Feb. 18. 1796

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil on laid paper (204 x 335)

Hand

Soane and George Dance (1741-1825)

Watermark

WM: Britannia with spear, shield and olive branch within a crowned roundel

Notes

Jill Lever writes that this drawing, SM volume 42/188 and SM volume 42/189 are three sheets of drawings for acroteria made by Dance presumably to assist Soane in his designs for the Lothbury wall. The inscriptions and the pencil additions appear to be made in Soane's hand. Soane notes in his diary on 21 February 1796 that he recently called on George Dance (1741-1825) specifically about the entrance design. The executed attic was more elaborate than Dance's designs, having twin double scrolls with florid paterae and anthemion and a large scallop shell in the centre. A trial sample can be seen near the top of the north side of the Monument Court of 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London (Sir John Soane's Museum). Dance's design, in SM volume 42/189, was for a segmental pediment with a single scroll on each side or a triangular pediment with a circular antefix on each side.

In 1796 Dance was designing his greatest (but unexecuted) scheme which was for the Legal Qays and Custom House of the Port of London using a skyline element close to Soane's for the Lothbury screen wall ( see J.Lever, Catalogue of the drawings of George Dance the Younger (1741-1825) and of George Dance the Elder (1695-1768) from the collection of Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2003, catalogue [39].4,p. 350). Dance later used his pediment and scroll or antefix designs to crown internal doors at, for example, Stratton Park, 1803-07 (Lever, op.cit., [78].119) and they can also be found in Soane's later work, in particular, for monuments.

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).