[24] Initial design for the library

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
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  - London: No. 49 (formerly 44) Grosvenor Square: alterations for Robert Knight, 1801-2 and 1818-19 (47)
    - Designs for fitting out the rooms, 1802-5 (17)

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Reference number

SM 40/3/22

Purpose

[24] Initial design for the library

Aspect

Plan and laid-out wall elevations

Scale

3/10 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Rob^tKnight Esq^r, (pencil) The Plan of the Library, (pen, Soane) Correspond with / chimney breast and dimensions given including 1½ (4 times)

Signed and dated

25/10/1802
Lincolns Inn Fields Oc^tr 25^th / 1802

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, yellow and pink washes, hatching, pricked for transfer on thin laid paper (552 x 554)

Hand

The office Day Book for 25 October 1802 has no mention of work done for Mr Knight though likely to be by Seward; the brown pen additions (hatching etc) are by Soane

Notes

The survey plans of the ground floor made for Lady Pembroke in 1798 [3 & 4] show the existing library with its free-standing Ionic columns and valulted 'aisles'. However, the survey plan of the ground floor [5] made for Mr Knight in July 1802 shows the room as completely bare and extended southwards into the garden. The note to drawing [22] concerning the re-use of the 'Columns of old Library' make it clear that it was stripped out and enlarged for Mr Knight. Here, in the new design, the westward wall is bowed while the wall facing the garden, has a large arched window that is designed as a half-circle though this is modified in subsequent drawings.
Literature: Survey of London, The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, volume XL part II, 1980, p.162.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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