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Design and finished drawing for a clothes press for Lady Coventry's bedroom, 1764, executed and then altered (2)

Notes

Designed by Adam, the clothes press was made by John Cobb in 1766, and the carvings executed by Sefferin Alken. It was intended for Lady Coventry's bedroom, but found to be too large, so it was divided into two parts, and placed in the lobby at the head of the main stairs to either side of the door into the bedroom. Both clothes presses were sold in October 1765, and one is now in the possession of the V&A Museum.

According to Adam's bill sent to Lord Coventry, he made his design for the clothes press in June 1765, charging £7.7s. for the drawing, and a further £2.2s. for a working drawing which does not survive. Further to this, Adam billed £1.10s. for a design to alter the clothes press, made in May 1767, presumably when it became apparent that the original piece was too large.

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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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Contents of Design and finished drawing for a clothes press for Lady Coventry's bedroom, 1764, executed and then altered (2)