[8] Preliminary column-flue design with studies in Soane's hand

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [8] Preliminary column-flue design with studies in Soane's hand

Browse

Books

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1356)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (431)
      - Bank Stock Office, 1791-1793 (73)
        Preliminary column-flue designs, November 1791 to c. March 1792 (8)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM volume 74/19

Purpose

[8] Preliminary column-flue design with studies in Soane's hand

Aspect

Longitudinal section looking east, with studies for vaulting and (verso) unrelated design for ionic entablature and base

Scale

bar scale of ¼ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

The Bank, Section of a Design for the Bank Stock Office, The beads will hide the jointing of / the Stone soffits & the plaistering / on the Cones, Plaister / flutes very shallow, Portl^d Stone, Cones (twice), 1 ½ (twice), Co: (twice), Con:, Cone, finishing and (verso) The Bank / Section of the Bank Stock / Office

Signed and dated

(Soane) March 18 1792

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, sepia and blue washes on wove paper with six fold marks (527 x 647)

Hand

Soane office

Notes

The primary significance of this drawing is the erased segmental side arch, which is replaced with a sketch of a semi-circular arch on the left (as realised). However, most of the sketches, particularly in the margins, explore the structural jointing and plaster finishing of the central arch. Soane wanted to use a bead moulding to disguise the structural joint between the Portland stone soffits and the hollow-cone voussoirs, as he notes in the inscription. In the finished hall, this bead moulding did not appear (though it did in the later Consols Transfer Office), nor did the serpentine spandrel decoration, fluted pendentives, clerestory fan-light, and small oculus sketched in pencil on the left bay. But the high vertical fluting sketched with sepia wash on the left piers was realised.

The lower arch in the crossing also relates this drawing to the preliminary designs for the upper-room scheme, SM volume 74/31, SM volume 74/26, SM volume 74/30 and SM volume 74/28. However, on the left-hand side of the sheet the arch is erased, suggesting that by this date, 18 March 1792, Soane had abandoned the idea.

Literature

J. Summerson, 'The evolution of Soane's Bank Stock Office in the Bank of England', The unromantic castle, 1990, pp. 148-153, ill. 132

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.

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).