[10] Design for the chimney wall for the library, c1769-70, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Alnwick Castle, Northumberland: designs for interior decoration and buildings in the park for the 1st Duke of Northumberland, 1769-83 (36)
    - Alternative preliminary design, designs and finished drawing for the chimney wall and chimneypiece for the library, 1769-70, Adam volumes 39/11 and 22/54 as executed (4)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 39/12

Purpose

[10] Design for the chimney wall for the library, c1769-70, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a chimney wall, with a central chimneypiece with spirally fluted column stiles, a pointed arched lining, and a frieze of anthemia. The chimneypiece is set within a pointed relieving arch, ornamented with foliage, and articulated by spirally fluted engaged columns; and this is flanked by pointed arched doors, ornamented with connected enclosed rosettes, and surmounted by trefoil-headed fluting enclosing drops of calyx. The whole is surmounted by a band of enclosed anthemia, above which are compartments containing enclosed rosettes, alternating with small niches above the chimneypiece, flanked by large paterae within triangular frames above the doors, and set within frames of quatrefoil ornamentation, and surmounted by fans of trefoils, crockets and anthemia

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Side of a Room & Chimney in Alnwick Castle for The Duke of Northumberland (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

1769-70
datable to c1769-70

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (598 x 505)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 1
Harris, 2001, pp. 88, 343
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 262
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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.

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