Page "Classical order" Paragraph 34

Several orders, usually based upon the composite order and only varying in the design of the capitals, have been invented under the inspiration of specific occasions, but have not been used again.

Thus they may be termed " nonce orders " on the analogy of nonce words.

Robert Adam's brother James was in Rome in 1762, drawing antiquities under the direction of Clérisseau ; he invented a British Order, of which his ink-and-wash rendering with red highlighting, is at the Avery Library, Columbia University.

Adam published an engraving of it.

In its capital the heraldic lion and unicorn take the place of the Composite's volutes, a Byzantine / Romanesque conception, but expressed in terms of neoclassical realism.

In 1789 George Dance invented an Ammonite Order, a variant of Ionic substituting volutes in the form of fossil ammonites for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, London.