Copy of a working drawing for composition mouldings, 1786-7

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Letton Hall, Norfolk: (executed) house for Dillingham Brampton Gurdon Dillingham, 1783-1789 (74)

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Reference number

SM volume 57/27

Purpose

Copy of a working drawing for composition mouldings, 1786-7

Aspect

57 Elevations of chimney-pieces for Bed Chamber, Mrs Dillinghams Dressing Room and M^rs Dillinghams Dressing Room / at Norwich and detail of frieze to the Breakfast Room chimney-piece

Scale

bar scale of 1/15 in to 1 ft approximately

Inscribed

as above and list: A 2 Patera / B 6.0 of small Gulochi (guilloche) // C 2 Oval Pateras / D 32 small Pateras // E 2 Oval Pateras / F 3 Festoons of Acorn & Oak Leaves / G 4 Drops of D^o// K Boys - to be sunk in tablet / NB an equal Margin L must be / preserved all round therefore, where / the Composition K is too broad / a part of it must be cut off // M Patera of Boys & Grapes / N 2 festoons of Ivy Leaves, Berries / O 2 Drops of d^o/ P 2 Ribbands / RR M^rDove is desired to Make these / upright instead of Thus V & the / Cornice over them quite straight, labelled XX equal Margins and some dimensions given

Medium and dimensions

Pen on laid paper bound into volume 57 (462 x 285)

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

Taylor

Notes

The drawing with details of four chimney-pieces was made for 'Mr Dove', a worker in 'composition for ornamental work - the name given to a sort of putty, consisting of whiting, glue, linseed oil, and resin, subjected for two hours to the action of steam, and forced by great pressure into wooden, metal or other moulds' (The Dictionary of Architecture,ed. Wyatt Papworth for the Architectural Publication Society, 8 vols, 1859-92).
See also drawings 46, 50, 52 and 53 for large size details for three of the chimney-pieces. There seems not to be a drawing for the chimney-piece for 'Mrs Dillingham's Dressing room at Norwich'. Mr Dillingham, presumably had a house in the City of Norwich. When he inherited Letton Hall in 1783 he was a widower (G.Darley, John Soane: an accidental Romantic, 1999, p.66) and subsequently (Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 1934) married again. Hence, the two chimney-pieces for the second Mrs Dillingham's dressing rooms at Letton Hall and in Norwich.

Literature

see 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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