[9] Design for a large sofa, 1779, as executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Hill Street, number 31 (later 17), London, designs for a rear elevation, interiors and furniture, for Sir Abraham Hume, 1778-1780 (64)
      - Preliminary design for a chair and designs for a chair, sofas and a confident sofa, 1779-1780, as executed (5)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 17/84

Purpose

[9] Design for a large sofa, 1779, as executed

Aspect

Elevation of a sofa articulated by four turned, fluted legs with turned feet, and with a seat rail ornamented with anthemia alternating with calyx. The sofa seats and backs are ornamented with patera enclosed within an oval band of beading and wreaths of husks surmounted by ox masks and tubular flowers. The sofa arms are formed from volute scrolls and ornamented with acanthus leaves. The back rail is ornamented with reed and ribbon, and is surmounted by a central cabochon bearing an anthemion, and corner lion masks

Scale

bar scale of 2 inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Design of a Sopha for Sir Abraham Hume Baronet in Hill Street

Signed and dated

May 1779
Adelphi / 20. May 1779

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including pink, Indian yellow and olive green on laid paper (442 x 231)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Verso

(In modern curatorial hand, pencil) vol 17

Watermark

JWHATMAN

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 41
Harris, 1963, p. 56
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

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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