Fig. 305.—Design for a Chimney-Piece at Shardiloes House, 1761, by Robert Adam.
In the Soane Museum.
Fig. 306.—CEILING AT THE LAW COURTS, NORTHAMPTON.
Fig. 307.—Ceiling at No. 16 Bishopsgate Street Without, London.
Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Under the influence of the brothers Adam, detail of exquisite delicacy was introduced, including panels of well-modelled figures. This ornament was sometimes carved in marble or wood, but still more frequently worked in composition and applied to the woodwork. An example by Robert Adam is shown in Fig. [305], and a design by Flaxman in Fig. [303].
We have already seen in Chapter V. how the busy ceilings of the Jacobean type changed into the coffered ceilings of Inigo Jones and Webb, who established a type which held the field, under Wren and his successors, well into the eighteenth century. The general tendency was to increase the relief of the plasterwork, to imitate nature instead of conventionalising it; to work on the same lines which Grinling Gibbons was following with his carving in wood. The result was that the plasterwork had frequently to be modelled on wire which formed the stems of the leaves, and much of it was completely detached from the surface of the ceiling which it adorned. A very fine example of this treatment is to be seen in the Courts of Justice at Northampton (Fig. [306]).