Dear my Bombé, at last I find you again!
More and more often you are missing from my storeroom, more and more often I search for you frantically, you know that I am fond of you, why on earth do you make yourself more and more wanted!
YOU WHO READ ME, YOU WILL LAUGH AT READING THESE WORDS OF MINE, BUT KNOW, EVEN IF YOU WILL TAKE ME FOR A FOOL (BUT... ARE ALL FOOLS .... REALLY FOOLS?!), KNOW, I WAS SAYING, THAT I REALLY SAY THESE WORDS INSIDE ME WHEN OF BOMBS' I FIND ONE TO TAKE HOME.
WHEN THEN, THE SPECIMEN IN QUESTION IS EVEN CARVED IN ONE OF THE MOST PRECIOUS MARBLES IN THE WORLD, WELL, THEN YOU CAN'T HELP BUT EXCUSE ME!
READ THE CONTINUATION OF THIS COMMENTARY AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHY I “FREAK OUT” UPON COMING ACROSS ONE OF THESE SPECIMENS....
Many people don't know (especially the “all-knowing” antiquarians, the ones who, with signed scarf around their necks even in August, erremosed lip and Patek Philippe on their wrists, flaunt expertise in all antiquarian scholarly knowledge, from the nails of the cross of Christ to Biedermeier sofas) that this antique fireplace is the daddy of all nineteenth-century fireplaces.
The story of its birth went, more or less, like this: We are in 1815-20, Napoleon Bonaparte has left a Europe shattered by his prowess, but rich in innovative ferment, and provided with new as well as more “democratic” wealth, that determined by the development of the bourgeoisie, a class that until a few decades before was sparse and heavily subjected to the nobility and the clergy, a class that in the post-Napoleon era became the first and powerful source of wealth.
And as is the case everywhere, the new rich, the "parvenu" (a term by which the French aristocrats derisively referred to those bourgeois who were accessing new social comforts...), in an attempt (I must say very successful...) to imitate the Berlusconi of the time and the nobility in particular, also decided to have in every room of their house a nice mantel!!
But... as affluent as they were compared to their serf ancestors, these “parvenus” were after all shopkeepers, artisans, officials, bureaucrats of no very high status, at most directors of a bank branch or secondary tax collectors...
They could not, therefore, spend as much on furniture magnificence as the true aristocrats, and so they fell back on a model of fireplace that involved costs within their reach..
Thus it was that our Louis XV Bombé fireplace, harmonious yet without excess, was the first truly mass-produced fireplace, the first fireplace to satisfy the emulative anxiety of the bourgeois parvenu.
Oh my, it's not like any manufacturer of the time was making “Chinese” quantities of them, but already designing and making series of a few dozen to be marketed within the bourgeoisie was a nice step toward the fireplacedemocracy..
THIS SPECIFIC FIREPLACE WAS CARVED, BASED ON THE DESIGN OF SOME GOOD PARISIAN ARCHITECT (THE STYLISM IS, CLEARLY AND UNMISTAKABLY, PARISIAN), IN A BELGIAN SCULPTURE WORKSHOP. THIS IS BECAUSE NOT EVERY SCULPTOR IN THE WORLD HAD THE NECESSARY EXPERIENCE TO DEAL WITH SUCH A HOSTILE MARBLE (FASCINATING BUT VERY DIFFICULT TO WORK WITH), AND THE PARISIAN FIREPLACE-MAKING “MAISONS” SPARED NO EXPENSE TO ACHIEVE THE HIGHEST QUALITY ON THEIR PRODUCTS, AND IF BELGIAN BLACK MARBLE WAS BEST WORKED IN THE CITY OF ANTWERP, THEY WENT THERE.
PARISIAN FIND, BELGIAN SCULPTURE, MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY PERIOD, EXCELLENT PRESERVATION.
