The Beauty of Measured Drawings

The Organisers of The Decorative Fair are excited to have collaborated with architect George Saumarez Smith, who generously allowed the Organisers to reproduce drawings from his recent “Sketchbooks” publication as backdrops to the Fair’s 2025 marketing campaign imagery.

George Saumarez Smith is one of the leading classical architects of his generation. A director of ADAM Architecture since 2004, he has worked across a wide range of projects including new country houses, alterations to historic buildings, commercial housing and urban design. As well as a practitioner, George regularly teaches and writes on subjects relating to traditional and classical architecture. He has taught measured drawing for the European Summer School in Classical Architecture since its inception in 2016. He has also taught regular courses at the Prince’s Foundation in London, the ICAA in New York, and the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Studies Program. In 2013 George published a selection of his work in A Treatise on Modern Architecture. In 2017 he put on an exhibition of his work at the RIBA in London entitled Measure Draw Build.

Below, George explains the background to the three drawings used by the Fair in our 2025 marketing imagery.

When I was a student training to be an architect, I was particularly fascinated by classical buildings. There were no tutors to help me learn more about this subject, and I began teaching myself by making measured drawings of parts of buildings that I saw and admired on my travels. Drawings of this kind are quite time-consuming as they involve carefully measuring the building with a tape-measure and transferring these measurements as a scale drawing into a sketchbook.

I’ve now been doing this for over twenty five years, and have many sketchbooks full of measured drawings. The sketchbooks themselves are of course precious to me, but even more so is the experience that I have gained from so many hours studying the construction, composition and detail of buildings. The drawings are all made on site and are drawn in HB or B pencil.

Three years ago a book was published of my measured drawings, simply called ‘Sketchbooks’. Then about a year ago I was contacted by the team at the Decorative Fair, asking if they might use some of my drawings as a photo shoot backdrop to publicise the upcoming fairs in 2025. I very happily agreed and suggested that the team might make their own selection of my drawings to be used for the shoot.

 

The first drawing chosen was one that I made in 2012, of a former electricity transformer station and tram depot in Upper Street, Islington. It is a building with an interesting history, having been constructed shortly after the demolition of a great London landmark, Newgate Prison, designed by the neoclassical architect George Dance. The demolition of the prison was overseen by the London County Council Architect’s Department, who in turn designed a series of tram depots around London in homage to the lost masterpiece.

George’s drawing of a former transformer station and tram depot in Islington, sized-up as a backdrop and photographed for The Decorative Fair.

The drawing chosen for the Spring Fair was one that I made in Berlin in 2010, and is a detail of the first floor landing balustrade in the main hall of the Altes Museum. This was designed by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel built between 1825 and 1830, and showing the amazing potential of cast iron as a decorative material.  

Drawing of a balustrade in Berlin’s Altes Museum

The drawing chosen for the Autumn Fair was one that I made in Rome in 2008, and is a detail of the scroll decoration on the Ara Pacis, amongst the most famous and beautiful examples of bas-relief decorative sculpture from Roman Antiquity. It was extremely challenging to measure and took most of a day to draw.

The complex scroll decoration on the Ara Pacis, Rome

It has been exciting to see my sketchbook drawings enlarged to a much bigger scale and used as a backdrop, and I hope that it may encourage other people to take up a pencil and to fill sketchbooks with drawings of things they see and admire.

Note to readers: To learn more about the work of George Saumarez Smith, visit his website www.adamarchitecture.com.  Copies of his published Sketchbooks: Collected Measured Drawings and Architectural Sketches are on display with exhibitor Don Kelly Book, stand F07 in the Foyer. You can also visit the publishers website here.