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Reference number
Purpose
Aspect
Scale
Signed and dated
- 1813-14
Medium and dimensions
Hand
Watermark
Notes
REPRODUCED. Stroud fig.74a.
NOTES ON [SM D2/5/38], [SM D2/5/28], [SM D2/5/25], [SM D2/5/23], [SM D2/5/24], [SM D2/5/22], [SM D2/5/3], [SM D2/5/9], [SM D2/5/2], [SM D2/5/10], [SM D2/5/5] and [SM D2/5/4]
Dance designed several alternative treatments for the 'branch' element of the stair and gallery railing. James Carter's accounts include an item 'Models & Moulds full Size / for Railings & Balustradings / to Grand Staircase' for which the labour (37 days and 1½ hours) cost £11.2s.11d. and included 'turning 19 / Columns and 1 Base and / Carving branch Leaf pattern'. A later bill for 'Moulds &c Grand Staircase / for Iron Founder to cast from' included a 'Lime Tree & / carving an Olive Branch' (ASH 2806, 1812-15). The full-size details of the executed design above most resemble the leaves and fruit of a lime tree; earlier designs had included bellflower as well as alternative versions of lime. It is noticeable that while Dance drew the form and details of, say, an order ([SM D2/2/21]) with assured economy, naturalistic ornament needed several attempts including models. Then again, perhaps the client contributed his own ideas.
Carter's role, as well as making mock-ups, was to turn and carve full-size moulds of the stair railing elements for the iron founder, William Bound, whose bill of 16 September 1816 detailed 'To Casting, fitting and fixing Iron railings for / Grand Staircase at Ashburnham Place. / cast Ballusters Branches & Scroll Pannels. / Wrought Iron Capping rail &c & railing / for 3 Arches Adjoining viz / 312 Ballusters [...] 42 double Ballusters [...] 26 Scroll Pannels [...] 179 Branches [...] 206 ft Top Rail [...] 2 Strong Newell Bases'. The total bill was £300.15s.6d. of which £15 covered 'Making sundry Patterns in brass & Iron / Scroll Patterns, altering & making new / Leafage Patterns' (ASH 2818).
Level
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).