Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [38] Design for an overmantel mirror frame for Lady Bathurst’s dressing room / third drawing room, 1778, possibly executed

Browse

  • image SM Adam volume 20/171

Reference number

SM Adam volume 20/171

Purpose

[38] Design for an overmantel mirror frame for Lady Bathurst’s dressing room / third drawing room, 1778, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a tripartite overmantel mirror frame articulated by tapering herm pilasters ornamented with drop calyx. The central compartment has a segmental head, bordered by calyx, and is surmounted by a figurative cameo. The cameo supports an urn bearing an anthemion, and is flanked by putti supporting festoons. Each compartment has an apron consisting of a wreath, a pendent peltoid shield and festoons. The side compartments contain candelabra supported by a base formed from half-patera. The compartments are surmounted by tablets ornamented with a medallion and swags, and surmounted by an urn

Scale

bar scale of 1 ½ inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Design of a Glass frame to be placed over the Chimney in Lady Bathurst’s Dressing room

Signed and dated

  • January 1778
    Adelphi / 31st Janry 1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including Indian yellow and cerulean blue on laid paper (291 x 451)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Watermark

JWHATMAN

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 44
Harris, 1963, pp. 57, 84
Harris, 2001(b), p. 100
Lea, 2005, p. 11
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.

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).