Joseph Bonomi The Younger - Work in England

Work in England

On his return to England, Bonomi got married to Jessie, daughter of artist John Martin (1789–1854), in 1844. Now based in London, Bonomi's work included cataloguing and illustrating many Egyptian collections (including that of Samuel Birch); he also set up with Owen Jones the Egyptian Court at The Crystal Palace when it was rebuilt at Sydenham in 1854 and helped to arrange the Egyptian exhibits in the British Museum in London.

He published Nineveh and its Palaces and works on Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, illustrated with his own drawings.

In 1861, Bonomi applied to become curator of the Sir John Soane's Museum. As this was normally a post awarded to a practising architect, he was only appointed after a fierce struggle and much criticism.

With his brother Ignatius, he built a house, The Camels, at Wimbledon in south-west London. He also invented a machine for measuring the proportions of the human body, and wrote a treatise, The Proportion of the Human Figure published in 1856.