The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1906)

Firegrates and Mantelpieces

effects can be obtained
in only two contrasted
surfaces, there being such

complete absence of model- H j ♦

ling that, with paper and

heelball, one can rub a • <>!■

piece of this flat carving i |BH

as easily as an engraved I MUUMDU' I

brass. ^^SE^^^k^iaM^Br';s^^^™ , | j^M^i"?' ~'^sis^i«^r'"fiS8^'§^!^S

Although not indeed m§ Jjf?{ : \ J i; Ml*'-- iSStiHj

belonging strictly to this

upright panels (p. 85) in ~wk ^Mlfill ' ""* "M' X I

low relief, by Mr. John W. -I | I ! -. -M

Bennett, of the Scottish J ^grf I W ^ 1

Guild of Handicraft, with

emblematic representations

of the vine, lily, rose and ■•.wB&tk'r .- • ■ .. - JPttHhr-

thorns, recall in a measure bedroom suite designed and executed by

the above described flat ' in waxed oak shapland & tetter, ltd.

carvings. More roundness ,
and modelling appear in the same artist's lunette the symbol and embodiment of home and hospi-
(p. 85), entitled Autumn; and again in his set of tality, necessarily occupies a very prominent
oblong panels on the same page, likewise introduc- position in the living room. This being so, it
ing figures, to represent the four seasons. is in every way fit and proper that, in the absence

of other structural features of architectural char-
FIREGRATES AND MANTELPIECES. acter, the fireplace and its surround should
In a cold climate like ours the fireplace, as become the keynote of the style of the rest of

the decoration. Such, indeed, was
the rule onward from the fifteenth
century. At that period the primi-
tive custom of the central hearth,
with a louvre-turret in the roof
overhead for the smoke to escape
through, as, to quote a famous
instance, in the great hall of
Penshurst Place, Kent, was very
generally abandoned in favour of a
structural fireplace and chimney in
the wall. As a logical result it
followed that the structural opening
thus formed, from the richest and
most elaborate of examples down
to the plainest, was built in due
conformity with contemporaneous
style. And so, during the Renais-
sance and through subsequent
changes, every fireplace erected
continued to reproduce the domin-
ant features of its time, until the
nineteenth century, when the last
trace of organic continuity became
___._„__ ,„„ extinguished, and the former archi-

bedroom fitment designed and executed by °

in oak liberty & co., ltd. tectural fireplace found itself reduced

86