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There is a lack of surviving working drawings and this may be explained by George Tappen taking over in 1813. He was the ‘Architect and Surveyor to the Governors of Dulwich College Estate’ at the time of construction and as Soane worked without a fee, perhaps once his scheme was agreed, Tappen took over surveying work on site and handling the working drawings.
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 Working and record drawings, June to July 1812 (8)
- [76] Working drawing for chimney stacks
- [77] Record drawing for chimney stacks
- [78] Record drawing for sarcophagus ornament
- [79] Working drawing for the timber framework of the Gallery roof
- [80] Working drawing for the timber framework of the Gallery roof
- [81] Record drawing for the timber framework of the Gallery roof
- [82] Record drawing for the east front
- [83] Record drawing for the west front