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Garden seat designs for Lady Craven

Architectural Drawing
19 October 1781 (made)
Artist/Maker
Soane, John (Sir) (architect)
Place of origin
London (made)

Two plans and three elevations for different designs of stone garden seats (recto); three more elevations (verso).


Object details

Categories
Drawings
Designs
Architecture
Object type
Architectural drawing
TitleGarden seat designs for Lady Craven (generic title)
Materials and techniques
pencil, pen and sepia ink (recto); pen and sepia ink (verso)
Pencil
Pen and Ink
Sepia Ink
Paper
Architectural Drawing
Brief description
Garden seat designs for Lady Craven including plans and elevations by Sir John Soane, 19 October 1781
Physical description
Two plans and three elevations for different designs of stone garden seats (recto); three more elevations (verso).
Dimensions
  • Height: 123mm
  • Width: 185mm
Dimensions taken from du Prey, P. de la Ruffinière. Sir John Soane: Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1985, p.34, cat.20.
Style
Neoclassical
Marks and inscriptions
  • Soane (inscribed in pencil at lower right (recto))
  • Sketches for Garden Seats Octr. 19th 1781 (in pen, in Soane's hand (verso))
Object history
Soane was commissioned by Lady Elizabeth Craven in 1781 to produce a garden seat design. The commission amounted to 8 guineas and may also have included a dairy design [3306:161]. These sketches were worked into a set of presentation drawings depicting two of the garden seats, but it seems that the structures were never executed by him. However, they represent one of the earliest recorded commissions Soane received as a practising architect.

This drawing was pasted into a copy of Sir John Soane's book Designs for Public and Private Buildings owned by Soane's assistant Charles James Richardson. Richardson built up a large collection of originals and copies (many of which he executed himself) of his master's designs, and distributed the bulk of them into two folio volumes, interspersed with the printed pages of the book. These volumes were bought by the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1863.
Subject depicted
Garden Seats
Association
Soane, John (Sir)
Associated object
3306:161
Bibliographic references
  • du Prey, P. de la Ruffinière. Sir John Soane: Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1985, p.34, cat.20.
  • du Prey, P. de la Ruffinière. John Soane: The Making of an Architect, Chicago, 1982, pp. 98-99, fig. 5.16, cat. 20 (recto)
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
3306:162

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O501185/garden-seat-designs-for-lady-architectural-drawing-soane-john-sir/
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