[83] Design for the Bullion Arch attic, November 1799

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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 Court and surrounding offices, 1797-1801 (109)

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Reference number

SM volume 69/46

Purpose

[83] Design for the Bullion Arch attic, November 1799

Aspect

Perspective as in SM volume 69/47 but the windows are larger and there are no roundels above them; between the twin columns, on either side of the entrance, the wall is decorated with a roundel and a blind Tivoli window bearing a figurative statue; a fret motif decorates the pedestals of the raised columns

Signed and dated

Bank of England / Nov: 12: 1799

Hand

Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843)

Notes

It appears that throughout November 1799 Soane was still experimenting with proportions and decoration of the Bullion Arch: mainly, the proportion between the windows and central entrance, and the decorative treatment of the slender strips of wall between the columns on either side of the entrance. In some drawings, the windows are diminished and a roundel is included to cover the wall space above them. In these cases, the space between the columns is left more plainly decorated. When the windows are enlarged, however, emphasis on the central doorway is maintained by increasing the ornamentation surrounding it. The dominance of central door over subsidiary windows therefore never changes.

This drawing, SM volume 69/47, SM volume 69/48 and SM volume 69/49 are sketches by Joseph M. Gandy and SM 10/3/45 appears to be a working drawing for the same design. The extra panel joining the antefixes above the attic was added in November of 1799. The concept of niches situated above the two windows was also a new inclusion at this time.

Level

Drawing

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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.

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