The architect Sir John Soane’s house, museum and library at No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields has been a public museum since the early 19th century. Soane demolished and rebuilt three houses in succession on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, beginning with No. 12 between 1792 and 1794, moving on to No. 13, re-built in two phases in 1808-9 and 1812, and concluding with No. 14, rebuilt in 1823-24.

I have carried out various paint and colour tasks in The Sir John Soane’s Museum. These have ranged from resolving technical problems on external joinery to carrying out a colour survey in order to allow for accurate reproduction of the paint colours.

Of particular interest was a piece of wall plaster that Sir John Soane had brought back from Herculaneum. I also measured this and believe that the original colour of the Library-Dining Room might have been based on this. Over the years the colour seems to have wandered and the existing colour was applied in 1951. Perhaps, one day, the room will be repainted to match the fragment from Herculaneum.




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