In medium-small size, this Louis Philippe “Palmettes” fireplace (a name derived from its pair of Palm leaves from which the capitals rise.. ) was carved in White Carrara marble quality “P” (the letter “P” stands for the adjective “PURE”), it benefits from an excellent state of preservation and an amateur patina, it comes to us from Paris, the home city of the most beautiful fireplaces in the world (think that, from the bourgeoisie up the social scale, everyone had a fireplace in every room, ESPECIALLY EVEN IN THE ENTRANCE!!).
Its era of construction is the Second Half of the nineteenth century.
And it is perhaps the most properly classical of the nineteenth-century fireplaces, since its forms are (OBVIOUSLY reduced in size), more or less traced from the Italian Renaissance fireplaces, which they were somehow trying to emulate..
It takes its “Renaissance” form from the just-fashioned Charles X style (PERIOD 1840-60), a style also referred to in Italy as “Late Empire.”....
Imagine this fireplace with two lion's paws at its feet and you have a Late Empire mantel, a style that also owes so much to the Italian Renaissance.
From the Charles X fireplace it also takes (and the Louis Louis Philippe style will adopt this system in each of its mantels..) the classic “smoke shot,” that slit, that gap between the two front bars that caused any smoke that came out of the hearth to be caught by the hair and brought back into the fold..
Fireplace this that was popular throughout Europe, from 1860 to 1900 (Early Art Nouveau period).
Fifty percent was built in Carrara White, the remaining half in every other known and...unknown marble.
A CURIOSITY: ARE YOU FROM FLORENCE, ROME OR CAPRI OR OTHERWISE PASSING THROUGH THOSE AREAS!
WELL, YOU CAN ADMIRE SEVERAL PALMETTES FIREPLACES LIVE BY ENTERING JK HOTELS IN THOSE CITIES..
IF THE DESIGNER OWNER OF THIS LUXURY HOTEL CHAIN (AND HIS INTERIOR DESIGNERS/ARCHITECTS ETC...) LIKES THESE FIREPLACES, THIS FACT IS TO BE CONSIDERED A GUARANTEE OF THEIR TIMELESS BEAUTY, NO?!
P.S: Would you like to know who is the designer owner of this chain of Hotels? I cannot tell you, he is a very private person and I would risk losing a client. I'll tell you what: I will only give in to gossip with the people who come to visit me in our exhibition, OK?
FOOTNOTES: ECOLOGY AND ANCIENT FIREPLACES.
On my bedside table I have a text of the seemingly “light” kind, or so I thought it was, judging by its cover and title: “Mao why are you dead” by Massimo Bucchi, more or less considered by me so far a mere “cartoonist.”
Instead, I must say that this reading also turned out to be most interesting, I would say. “fulminating,” and since I cannot summarize it for you fully here, I have chosen from among them all, a cartoon depicting a priest at the bedside of the dying man.... The priest is asking the dying man if he has anything to repent of, and this gentleman, with the generosity and steadfastness of important moments painted on his face, says to him, “I LET MY SON LEAVE THE HOPE ON.”
As if to say: Of this world we have made a dustbin, physical and moral, and we have even noticed it but we have done nothing to put a patch on it, this is my greatest sin and this makes my sorrow greater now that I am leaving and must leave this dump to my son, who will have to, blamelessly, provide for its cleanup.
What does this speech of mine have to do with the comment of a nineteenth-century fireplace?
Well, in my life I can say that I have tried, from the very beginning of my activity, to keep this world clean, in fact for every fireplace that I collect, restore and sell, there is a piece of mountain that is not hollowed out and fleshed out...
I am well aware that it is not easy to take my word for it, but I used to think about these things even almost half a century ago, at my first move into the field of restoration, comforted in the thought of inevitable and certain success (as one is rightly deluded in one's twenties !!!) by the fact that an antique fireplace is more “beautiful,” more “real,” more “charming,” more “artistic,” and more “economical” than a new one, smelling of plastic and acids...
A little bit I was right, more or less to THE 1 PER CENT of ancient expectations.
