- -€1,400.00
The last time anyone in Italy clearly answered “YES " or "NO” was at the referendum on divorce....
Then the era of “DEPENDS” began.
One answers “Depends” in order not to compromise oneself, not to say what one would like to say or one sticks to “Depends” in order to deflect and stall
EVERYTHING ALWAYS DEPENDS ON SOMETHING ELSE.
It depends on the trend of the dollar, on how Meloni and Salvini woke up this morning, on the decisions taken overnight by the terrible Triad Santanchè, Del Mastro and La Russa..or (that's all we needed...) on the daily diktats of a certain Renzino...
I too, at times, do not shy away from this italic attitude and if you ever asked me why this fireplace, which in the beginning of the commentary is presented as INTERESTING, costs so little, I would answer with my own “It depends..”
Depends on what?
Well, it depends on the Market... Pretty much like the spread...
It depends on a market that is as fickle as a woman, a market that wishes all fireplaces were so white as to seem washed with Tide, a market that penalizes that Carrara White with some very natural gray-black fretting (they are plant fossils) as this fireplace has in its limbs...
And to think that this White Carrara would better allow our fireplace to “stand out” from the surfaces of the walls (generally white in color) better than a fireplace in too candid Statuario Carrara !!!
But what can you do, so goes the world, all caught up in chasing fashions...
Moreover, the customer who well understands how White Carrara marble cannot always and in any case be white (not even the marble of Michelangelo's Pieta was white, a quarter of a century ago it was “bleached” by the fantastic master restorers of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Rome and Florence), this customer, I was saying, by accepting that the White Carrara marble of this fireplace is a little rich in gray fretwork, will save almost half the money and when he has laid our fireplace on the white walls of his room, he will be better able to appreciate the fireplace itself, whose white color will differ from the “off-white color of the tempera painting of his wall.
LAST AND MOST POSITIVE “AESTHETIC” NOTE ON OUR POMPADOUR PLAT:
99% of the PLAT mantels have an OVAL SHAPED groove in the center of the front (I cannot tell you what this oval represents because the subject is forbidden to those under 18 years of age. In case you are curious about how much I am denying you, no problem, call our landline 0522-65 38 35 and ask Maurizio) while this mantel has, in the center of its front, a groove drawing a circle.. Said circle represents a daisy, and the daisy is the most recurrent tribute to Louis XIV, the Sun King. OUT OF A HUNDRED PLATS, ONLY ONE HAS THIS ROUND DAISY. The sides of our fireplace also have, made by grooves, designs quite original compared to its brethren.
Also interesting is its size because. Because this fireplace model was intended mainly for bedrooms and entrances, so its measurements in width were, on average, close to 110 cm.. OUR HERO, on the other hand, again makes the original and widens to about cm 125, that is, the most built measure in the context of fireplaces intended for other and more important rooms.
FINDING OCCURRED IN SAINT DENIS, AN ARCHITECTURALLY FANTASTIC TOWN NEAR PARIS,NOW UNFORTUNATELY DEFACED BY AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF KEBABS AND MOSQUES, PERFUMED (SO TO SPEAK) BY UNBEARABLE EFFLUVIA OF COOKED VEGETABLES AND STRANGE ORIENTAL FOODS, OF HUGE BLACK VEILS AND TERRIBLE BURQUAS ESCAPING ALONG WITH GUSTS OF CHILDREN (THEY HAVE TO MAKE AT LEAST FIVE EACH OTHERWISE THEY GO TO HELL) FROM FANTASTIC ART NOUVEAU HOUSES, HOUSES THAT HAVE BEEN ABANDONED FOR DECADES NOW BY THE OLD FRENCH OWNERS AND, CONSEQUENTLY, DESPOILED BY THE NEW TENANTS, WHO DON'T CARE ABOUT OUR FIREPLACES IN THE LEAST. ENOUGH OR I'LL CRY.
OUR POMPADOUR PLAT WAS BORN IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES, IS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION (SOUND AS AN ANTLER) AND COST TWO LIRAS, ACTUALLY SOMETHING LESS.
“SAUCER”
That's right ... Piattino... this is the vulgar nickname that Italian dealers have given to this Louis XV° model of fireplace to which, moreover, they themselves owe a great deal in economic terms. In France said fireplace is called, much more sympathetically, “Pompadour plat.”
“Plat” because the workings, within each of the panes on the front and legs, is executed, for obvious reasons of economy, in an even slab, without any doming. In practice, once the slab was shaped, the stonemason only “scalloped” it, thus producing the only aesthetic “effects” of this particular mantel.
This economical model was purchased by nineteenth-century patrons almost exclusively to embellish a bedroom, rarely for a reception room.
Again, most mantels, more or less 70 percent, were carved from White Carrara marble while the remaining 30 percent were made from every knowable marble. Just think that we, some 20 years ago, found a mantel made of Hunan marble, named after a quarry that still exists in China!
Said mantel is, by far among antique fireplace mantels, the most widely used in the Western world.
