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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 House and interior
- Finished drawings for the library, 1764, unexecuted (2)
- Preliminary design and finished drawing for a ceiling for the library, 1764, unexecuted (2)
- Finished drawing for the south front of the house, 1764, unexecuted (1)
- Finished drawings for the plan and south front of the house, 1767-68, executed with alterations (2)
- Designs for the library, 1767, executed with minor alterations (3)
- Finished drawing and record drawing for the ceiling in the library, 1767, executed with minor alterations (2)
- Presentation drawing for a chimneypiece for the library, 1767, executed with alterations (1)
- Rough preliminary designs for a sofa for the north wall of the library, c1768-69, executed with alterations (2)
- Presentation drawing for a ceiling for the ante room, c1767, executed with minor alterations (1)
- Record drawing for the ceiling of the staircase, 1767, presumed to be as executed but not surviving (1)
- Rough preliminary design for a lantern on a pedestal for the staircase, c1768-69, as executed (1)
- Finished drawing for a ceiling for the hall-cum-dining room, 1773, executed with alterations (1)
- Alternative designs for a mirror frame for the hall-cum-dining room, 1773, Adam volume 20/119 as executed (2)
- Rough preliminary design and drawing made for publication for mirror frames for the private dining parlour, 1771-73 (2)
- Rough preliminary design for a chimneypiece for the Chinese room, c1771-72, as executed (1)
- Rough preliminary drawing made for publication for a title plate, 1773, unused (1)
- Rough preliminary drawing made for publication for various items of furniture, 1774 (1)
- Variant rough preliminary designs and finished drawing for a chimneypiece for Lord Mansfield's dressing room, 1779, executed with alterations (3)
- Preliminary design for a chimney board for Lord Mansfield's dressing room, c1779 (1)
- Unfinished presentation drawings, and working drawings for a large epergne, c1781 (8)
- Preliminary design and finished drawing for a chimneypiece for the middle bedroom, executed with alterations, 1783 (2)
- Preliminary design, record drawing, and working drawings for a painted chimneypiece for Lady Mansfield's sitting-cum-dressing room, unexecuted, 1783 (4)
- Preliminary designs for alternative carved frames, c1767-83 (3)
- Record drawings for friezes, N.D. (3)