[7] Preliminary design for a chimneypiece and overmantel mirror frame for the ground floor drawing room, c1774, possibly executed

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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)
      - Preliminary design and design for a chimneypiece for the ground floor drawing room (now the entrance hall), 1774, possibly executed (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 24/167

Purpose

[7] Preliminary design for a chimneypiece and overmantel mirror frame for the ground floor drawing room, c1774, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of part of a chimneypiece with a stile ornamented with rosettes, swags and ram masks, surmounted by an urn supporting an anthemion, all enclosed within a border of fluting. There is a frieze of arabesques, with a central figurative tablet surmounted by a half-roundel depicting an urn flanked by reclining figures. The chimneypiece is surmounted by an overmantel mirror frame, with a stile ornamented with a base flanked by griffins, above this there is a fire screen in relief ornamented with an urn and ram masks. The capitals are ornamented with a cameo enclosed by vine leaves, and there is a frieze with a central mask also enclosed by vine leaves

Inscribed

1st Drawing Room Apsley House / 1st Drawing Room parlor story / Apsley House / and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

c1774

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (204 x 321)

Hand

Possibly
Robert Adam

Watermark

Britannia within a crowned cartouche

Literature

For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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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