[23] Design for a chimneypiece for the great drawing room (now the portico room), 1774, executed with minor alterations

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Apsley House, Piccadilly, London: plans, elevations, section and designs for the interior, and an elevation for the gatehouse, for the 2nd Earl Bathurst, 1771-1779 (56)
      - Designs for a chimneypiece and overmantel mirror frame for the great drawing room (now the portico room), 1774-1778, executed with minor alterations (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 23/61

Purpose

[23] Design for a chimneypiece for the great drawing room (now the portico room), 1774, executed with minor alterations

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece with pilaster stiles ornamented with an urn, anthemia and husks. Below this there are diminutive wreaths containing sphinxes, tubular flowers, masks and calyx. The capitals contain ox skulls and there is a frieze of fans, arabesques and beading, with a central tablet depicting reclining figures and heraldic stags (the Bathurst armorial supporters)

Scale

bar scale of 1 ½ inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Chimney Piece for the 2nd Drawing room at Apsley House and dimensions given

Signed and dated

1774
1774.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (406 x 292)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or William Hamilton

Watermark

IHS IVILLEDARY

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 44
Harris, 2001(b), p. 100
Lea, 2005, pp. 9, 15
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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