The Scotsman

Thousands of drawings by the world-renowned Scottish architect Robert Adam have been uncovered for the first time in almost two centuries. About 9,000 of Adam's designs were glued into 57 albums by his relatives to make them easier to sell after the family fell on hard times. In doing so, drawings on the back were lost for more than 170 years. Now, using a technique developed for examining old watermarks, an academic, Dr Ian Christie-Miller, has been able to see through the paper and reveal the hidden image. The albums were bought by Sir John Soane in 1833 for £200 and are kept at his house in London, which is now Sir John Soane's Museum. Staff there had considered trying to lift the paper out of the albums, but were concerned about the risk of damage. Stephen Astley, the drawing curator at the museum, said that when Adam was in Italy in the mid-1750s, he tended to use both sides of paper when making drawings of Roman ruins that inspired his neo-classical style.