[12] Finished drawing for a chimneypiece for the library, 1769, as executed

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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 22/54

Purpose

[12] Finished drawing for a chimneypiece for the library, 1769, as executed

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece, with stiles ornamented with narrow paired fluted, banded columns with stiff leaf capitals; a pointed arched lining, ornamented with pilasters with stiff leaf capitals, miniature rosettes, and with rinceaux in each corner; with a frieze ornamented with anthemia, and the mantel is surmounted by a mantel clock flanked by small sculpted lions on circular pedestals, and small figurative sculptures on pedestals

Scale

bar scale of 2 inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Chimney Piece for the Library at Alnwick Castle

Signed and dated

1769
1769

Medium and dimensions

Pen and wash on laid paper (440 x 510)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi

Watermark

LVG surmounted by fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Notes

Everything above the mantel has been cropped, and replaced with the current design.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 1
Stillman, 1966, p. 111
Harris, 2001, pp. 89, 343
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

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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