Design for a garden seat from John Soane’s Designs in architecture ; consisting of plans, elevations and sections, for temples, baths, cassines, pavilions, garden-seats, obelisks, and other buildings ; for decorating pleasure-ground, parks, forests, etc, 1778
In a recent post I looked at Pitzhanger, the country retreat of Sir John Soane. But Soane was interested in gardens at several other levels. Firstly he designed garden buildings, publishing a series of ideas and plans for seats, temples, tea houses and pavilions. That’s perhaps not surprising. He was after all an architect and in his early days an architect desperate to get commissions. There are also schemes for some gardens to accompany his major country house commissions. What is perhaps more interesting is that he also collected plans and drawings not only by other architects, including Robert Adam, but also by garden makers like George London and Henry Wise. Many of them are in his collection at the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London.
Robert Adam, Preliminary design for a Seat of Wood & Canvass for Lady Scarsdale, c1760-70, unexecuted
Sir John Soane’s Museum
Amongst the Adam drawings that Soane collected are a whole series of garden buildings and paraphernalia for Kedleston in Derbyshire, including a wood and canvas garden seat for Lady Scarsdale, and some designs for ‘a garden hut for Miss Curzon’
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