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Alternative record drawings for a mirror in the dining room, 1780-1 (2)

Notes

The library was converted into a new dining room in 1780-81 through the replacement of the bookcases with new Zucchi paintings, the addition of a sideboard in the bowed end, and the filling-in of the windows for niches, the whole painted in green and grey. There is some dispute as to the extent of Adam's work in the conversion of the library into a dining room. To King, there is 'no proof that Adam supervised the conversion but it seems highly likely'. However Harris writes that to consider it an Adam design is 'unthinkable' and Adam was only contacted to design the elements that were beyond the abilities of Stockman.

Bolton considers Adam volume 20/237 to represent a mirror for the old 'eating room' rather than the new dining room. However subsequent scholars have treated it as part of the conversion of the library, an oval design for a mirror rejected when the patron wanted a plain rectangular one. This had happened with the Great Drawing Room (see Adam volume 50/68) and once again Adam had to produce another design. Harris speculates that the rejection in this case was due to the large size of Stockman's already-built tables underneath the mirror position, which would have created an imbalance. Stockman probably also executed the mirror design.

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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).  


Contents of Alternative record drawings for a mirror in the dining room, 1780-1 (2)