For my installation in the Breakfast Room at Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing I used the archives of the Research Library at Sir John Soane’s Museum and of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Sir John Soane started rebuilding Pitzhanger Manor in 1800 as a showpiece for his talent as an architect and a collector. He designed the Breakfast Room to evoke an ancient tomb for the display in context of his collection of antique cinerary vases and sepulchral objects. There is no known inventory of the art objects he presented there.
Further research into his writings, drawings, contemporary collectors’ preferences and fashion allowed me to create a substitute list. I drew to scale comparable items from the British Museum collections and presented the drawings in the niches or on the shelves of the Breakfast Room where Sir John Soane’s objects would have originally been shown.