WARNING: THE FIREPLACES IN EFFIGY ARE THERE PLACED ONLY AS EXAMPLES.
BY READING WHAT I WRITE BELOW YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THE REASON FOR THIS STRANGE PRESENTATION OF FIREPLACES THAT NOTHING SEEMS TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE ART DECO STYLE.
DEVELOPMENT:
DO YOU SEE THESE FIREPLACES?
THEY ARE NOT ART DECO, THEY WERE BUILT ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE THE ART DECO STYLISTIC PERIOD....
YET.
AND YET SAID “BOUDIN” FIREPLACES (AN APPELLATION DERIVED FROM THE NAME OF THEIR MYTHICAL BUILDER) WERE COPIED EXTENSIVELY IN THE ART DECO PERIOD (1920S-30S) FOR THEIR ARCHITECTURAL MINIMALISM AND THE EXTREME MODERNITY OF THEIR LINES..
THEREFORE, THOSE WHO DESIRE AN ART DECO FIREPLACE FOR THEIR HOME DECOR WOULD CERTAINLY NOT COMMIT IMPURE ACTS IF THEY DECIDED TO MAKE ONE OF THESE FORERUNNERS OF FUTURIST AND ART DECO STYLISM THEIR OWN; IN FACT, I THINK SUCH AN ACT WOULD BE A FITTING RECOGNITION OF THEIR SYMPATHETIC AND BRILLIANT SCULPTOR COSTAZZURRINO, THE AFOREMENTIONED BOUDIN.
HOW MUCH MODERNITY THERE IS IN THE ANTIQUE, ISN'T THERE!
WHOEVER WISHES TO SEE THESE AND OTHER SUCH SPECIMENS, GO TO OUR LUIGI XIV SECTION, AND PERHAPS FIND “HIS” ART DECO FIREPLACE, BUILT ALMOST A CENTURY BEFORE THE ADVENT OF ART DECO ITSELF !!!
'TECHNICAL' NOTES : THE COLOR OF THE FIREPLACE IN RELATION TO THE FURNITURE
Once a lady all strutting about, signed from the tips of her toes to her nostrils, after squaring me and judging me (GOODNESS HERSELF..) fit for the answer she expected, thus apostrophized me:
'Tell me, Maurizio, I have fuchsia curtains in the hall, you, what fireplace would you recommend!?
To the lady I replied that I was not even a surveyor and that I would never allow myself to be an architect in her house, thus disappointing her a little but on second thought that question was not so peregrine, since very often it happens to listen to people intent on matching the color of the floor or walls, furniture or doors, to that of the fireplace they are buying.
I do not intend to give 'artistic' advice here because it is really true that I am not even a surveyor (disappointed? You were perhaps expecting an architect or at least an Art History graduate, weren't you!?) but ... something, more of a technical nature, I feel I can express here.
I would like to make you think about something that many people don't pay attention to: The color of a fireplace mantel represents, in the overall 'fireplace area more or less one-fifth of the whole.
What I call the 'fireplace area is, in fact, made up of the mantel in question but also of its interior (the actual hearth) which, of course, has the color of stone or brick or plaster (itself susceptible to any coloring..). And then on the hearth floor you will put a mantelpiece or a mirror or a tapestry or a painting or a (terrible) plasma television, nowadays so a la page... More color, more colors..
This is not the end of the story: To the husbands, deluded that the expenses of the fireplace at the end of its construction are over, I remind them that now their wives must “decorate” it perhaps with pairs of vases, trinkets of all kinds as long as they are very expensive and glittering, Napoleonic clocks and candlesticks if it goes well of silver in addition to whatever their diabolical minds will manage to give birth to to the detriment of their wallets.
And they are other, a thousand other colors.
Last, what do you do, don't you put in front of the fireplace a beautiful gilded bronze sparkle-guard, fixed or fan-shaped that is!
More color yet
My humble advice is, therefore, not to fixate too much on the color of the mantel and to buy a fireplace because moved to do so by a 'falling in love felt within and not by a calculation of craftsmanship.
The only dutiful exception seems to me to be the one concerning the 'point of contact between the floor and the feet of the fireplace: If your floor is in a material of variegated colors such as, for example, Venetian seminato or Vietri majolica, then it may be right for the color of the fireplace to be a solid color (e.g., in Carrara White). Conversely, if your floor has homogeneous color, it can 'easily carry any fireplace in variegated marble or solid color.
