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Purpose
Signed and dated
- 1774
Notes
Under the aegis of Charles Cameron (1745-1812) the Adam style had spread to Russia. Catherine herself was a follower of British fashion, and collected various works by English artists. According to Libin, Catherine was not a musician herself, but encouraged her daughter-in-law, Natalia Alekseevna, Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt to play, and Libin has suggested that the designs for a harpsichord and pianoforte case, which Catherine commissioned from Robert Adam in 1774, were intended as gifts for Natalia. Indeed, Natalia had only married Catherine's son, Grand Duke Paul, a year earlier.
Adam's two instrument case designs for the Russian court were not executed, although the harpsichord case is illustrated in Adam's first volume of the Works in architecture of Robert and James Adam, and a much altered version of the design was made in London by an unknown cabinetmaker, containing an instrument by Johann Zumpe, and survives at the Palace of Pavlovsk.
Literature:
R. & J. Adam, The works in architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1773-78, Volume I, part v, pl. viii; A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1992, Volume II, Index pp. 57, 86; G. Beard, The work of Robert Adam, 1978, pp. 17-18, 54; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 273-75; L. Libin, 'Robert Adam's instruments for Catherine the Great', Early Music Journal, August 2001, pp. 355-67
Frances Sands, 2013
Level
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 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia: unexecuted designs for a harpsichord and pianoforte case, 1774 (9)
- Rough preliminary designs, designs, finished drawing and record drawings for a harpsichord case, 1774, unexecuted (7)
- Record drawings for a pianoforte case, 1774, unexecuted (2)