THIS SPECTACULAR FIREPLACE WAS CARVED IN A VERY PLEASANT “BURGUNDY PINK” AND IS AMONG THE OLDEST BAROQUE FIREPLACES THAT CAN BE FOUND ON THE MARKET (FORGERS EXCLUDED, OF COURSE ...), ITS BIRTH, IN FACT, IS TO BE DATED TO THE LAST QUARTER OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
ITS PROVENANCE IS PROVENCE, ITS PRESERVATION IS DEFINABLE BY THE ADJECTIVE ... PERFECT.
I WILL NOT ADD ANYTHING ELSE, I THINK IN FACT THAT THIS FIREPLACE MANTEL WILL BE 'CERTAINLY UNDERSTOOD BY THE MOST' REFINED ADMIRERS AND LOVERS OF ANTIQUES, WHICH WILL ALSO BE ENCOURAGED BY ITS PRICE, EXCEPTIONALLY LOW BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THIS PURCHASE OF OURS DATES BACK SOME TWENTY YEARS AGO AND ONLY NOW WE ARE PUBLISHING IT TO SELL IT..
IMPORTANT: WE HAVE YET TO RESTORE THIS FIRE SURROUND (NOT THAT IT HAS ANY PARTICULAR PROBLEMS BUT, IN SHORT, SOME MAQUILLAGE WE TRY TO PERFORM EVEN ON THE FIREPLACES OF GOOD PHYSICAL AND ROBUST CONSTITUTION.
LAST AND IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS SPECIMEN WAS CARVED ON MASSIVE MARBLE BLOCKS AND ITS WEIGHT IS, ROUGHLY, 300/350 KGS (ABOUT 650-750 LBS).
IT IS, PERHAPS, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT IN THE PERIODS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING ITS BIRTH AND UP TO THE MIDDLE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, FIREPLACES WILL GIVE MADE FROM SLABS OF MARBLE A FEW CM THICK AND WITH WEIGHTS AROUND A QUARTER OF THE FANTASTIC LOUIS XV PRESENTED HERE.
CURIOSITY: The color of the fireplace in relation to the décor.
Once a lady all strutting about, signed from her feet to her nostrils, after squaring me and judging me fit for the answer she expected, thus apostrophized me:
'Tell me, Maurizio, I have fuchsia curtains in the hall, you, what fireplace do 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 butthat 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 do not pay attention to: The color of a fireplace surround 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 frame 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 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 it, to the husbands, deluded that the expenses of the mantelpiece are finished when its construction is finished, I remind them that the best part comes now, now that their wives have to 'decorate' it by placing on the tablette (the floor) pairs of vases, trinkets of all kinds as long as they are very expensive and glittering, Napoleonic clocks and silver candlesticks if it goes well, in addition to whatever their diabolical minds can come up with to the detriment of their wallets.
And they are other, a thousand other colors.
Lastly, 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 frame and to buy a fireplace more moved to do so by a 'falling in love felt within than 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 Venetian seminato, for example, then it may be right for the color of the fireplace to be a solid color (in Carrara White, for example). Conversely, if your floor has homogeneous color, it can 'carry with ease any fireplace in variegated marbles in addition to any solid-color marble fireplace.
