The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1906)

Firegrates and Mantelpieces

through " the development
of the overmantel.

The old-fashioned type
of cast-iron grate, like those
executed by Messrs. George
Wright (p. no), reproduc-
ing features of the ornament
of the brothers Adam—
for either of these grates
Messrs. G. & A. Brown's
mantel (p. 93) would form
a suitable setting—is now-
adays less frequent than
very plain grates, which,
on account of their negative
and unassuming character,
may be made to serve with
widely divergent styles ot
decoration.

For bedrooms and small
rooms numerous designs of

basket-grate in designed by t. worthington & son, architects fireplaces, combining grate

hammered iron and brass executed by geo. wragge, ltd. v . & °

and mantelpiece all in one,
have been introduced. The

to a cast-iron grate in the midst of a polished majority of these "registers," as they are called,
marble frame, with no sort of claim to style, being executed in cast iron, are sold at a much
except that the costlier specimens had more lower cost than stone, marble, or wood mantels,
or less pretentious consoles beneath either end and, moreover, can be painted to suit the general
of the mantel-shelf, and a travesty of Grecian style of whatever room they are fixed in, and have
honeysuckle or shell ornament, resting on the thus proved themselves more amenable to decorative
plinth, against the side
supports.

The recent evolution
of the fireplace, however,
has taken opposite direc-
tions. For while, on the
one hand, movable basket-
grates with dogs or andirons
standing on an open health,
have largely been reintro-
duced for halls and dining-
rooms, on the other hand
economy and science, en-
joining new and improved
systems of heating and
combustion, have tended
to lower fixed grates, and
altogether to curtail their
dimensions. At the same
time the "cheeks,"surround
and framework, so far from
diminishing in proportion,
have rather increased in

fireplace in marble designed by j. henry sellers, architect

scale and importance and corpER executed by longden & co.

87