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St Martin's Lane, number unknown, London: designs for mirror frames for Mr Hamilton, c1787 (7)

Signed and dated

  • 1787

Notes

St Martin's Lane was a medieval field lane, later becoming a link lane between St Martin-in-the Fields and St Giles-in-the Fields. It was built upon from the late sixteenth century, and became popular with doctors and artisans in the later seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century.

These drawings survive for mirror designs for an unknown house on St Martin's Lane. The designs are not known to have been executed, and the patron, Mr Hamilton, is also unknown. Arthur Bolton has suggested that he may have been John Hamilton of Bargeny who was a subscriber to Adam's publication The ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (1764).

According to the ratebooks, one, Sarah Hamilton lived at number 42 St Martin's lane from 1785-87, but it is not known if she was connected with Adam's patron for these designs.

See also: St James's Square, number unknown: unexecuted designs for a ceiling and frieze for Mr Hamilton

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James, Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 50, 74; Survey of London, Volume 20, 1940, pp. 119-22; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, Index p. 58; B. Weinreb, and C. Hibbert, The London encyclopaedia, 1983, p. 756; S. Bradley, and N. Pevsner, The buildings of England: London 6; Westminster, 2003, p. 360

Frances Sands, 2013

Level

Scheme

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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Contents of St Martin's Lane, number unknown, London: designs for mirror frames for Mr Hamilton, c1787 (7)