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  • image SM 36/2/28

Reference number

SM 36/2/28

Purpose

[25] Design 'D' for the interior of the House of Commons

Aspect

Plan and laid-out wall elevations

Scale

bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

labelled: (D)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia and blue-green washes, pricked for transfer within single ruled border on laid paper (365 x 518)

Hand

William Kent (1685 - 1748)

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche / LVG

Notes

Plans A, B, C, D2 and E are at The National Archives (WORK 29/3358 (7-11); Salmon, figs. 13.36 (E) and 13.37 (D2)). The Commons chamber has a 'D'-shaped plan. The benches behind the Speaker's chair are canted, similar to the layout of the old House of Commons designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Over the chamber entrance door is a bust of an ancient British king.

(Salmon, pp. 348-49 and note 132)

Level

Drawing

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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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