DEAR MY ART DECO PARISIAN FRIEND , BEFORE I BEGIN THE COMMENTARY ABOUT YOU, I MUST MAKE AN INDISPENSABLE PREAMBLE: YOU ARE MUCH BETTER IN PERSON THAN IN PHOTOGRAPHS, JUST LIKE ME, WHO IS AS HANDSOME AS YOU BUT “LOOK BAD” IN PHOTOS.
You are very tall (120 cm while on average your brethren are between 100 and 110 cm) and if it is true that “Height is half Beauty,” well, we are off to a good start..
Your design (I was going to write “design,” given your extreme modernity, but since in your era-the 1930s of the 1900s-people hadn't yet recoiled with all those English words, I restrained myself from committing such a misdemeanor) Your design, I was saying, is rather classic, clean, sober, in short “elegant without excess,” as true gentlemen generally are.
Your only originality consists in the binary representation of those two circles penetrated horizontally by two opposing lines between them.
It is clear that, as often happens in antique fireplaces, it is a symbolism, symbolism that might have been dear to the architect who designed this model or even (this also often happened) a symbolism affixed to the fireplace at the request of the buyer himself, who wanted to express, I don't know, his adherence to Freemasonry (Freemasons were the most avid to show themselves through symbols such as the five-pointed star or the compass or the book etc. . .) or for “nationalistic” issues (see the marks of gratitude to Louis XIV's Grandeur, so suns and daisies galore) or even certain symbols that referred to the owner's working guild.
So let us go on to analyze what those two circles partially penetrated by a horizontal line and opposed to each other represent.
The circle itself represents Spirit, the ethereal part of us humans, our personality.
When the circle is penetrated vertically (i.e., with a line pointing to the sky), well, then it is a longing, as it were, for the upliftment of the spirit itself, a drawing nearer to God, a tension, in short, at a spiritual bottom.
When, on the other hand, said line horizontally penetrates the circle itself, well, then, things change radically because in this case, the spirit becomes “humanized,” expressing material tensions and for this reason, precisely, depicted skimming and parallel to the earth.
These two opposing circles are not to be considered as opposites, but rather as complementary (just like Yin the Yang, black and white, man and woman) and insertable into each other.
Beyond these universal interpretations of our symbols, I believe that in our specific case, we should translate this symbolic representation to the point of bringing it into the very house in which the fireplace was located in its time and will be located in the continuation of its life:
The two opposing circles represent the two consorts who own the fireplace, their personalities (albeit "earthly") and their ability to penetrate each other, to be and always remain united.
THERE ARE MANY AUSPICIOUS WISHES IN THE DECORATIONS OF ANTIQUE FIREPLACES, AND THIS ONE, ADDRESSED TO FAMILY UNITY, IS ONE OF THE WISHES DEAREST TO ME.
