SERIOUS (OR ALMOST SERIOUS) COMMENT:
MY FIRST THOUGHT UPON SEEING THIS BLACK MARQUINIA MARBLE FIREPLACE:
NEVER HAVE I SEEN SUCH A SIMPLE FIREPLACE DRESSED IN SUCH A REFINED AND “A LA PAGE” MARBLE.
IT'S A LITTLE LIKE SEEING A FOUNDRY WORKER ENTER THE FACTORY DRESSED IN SILK AND TULLE LACE!!!
Oh yes, because the Pompadour Bombé was a fireplace intended ALWAYS AND ONLY for the rooms of its century... Dignified and stylistically beyond reproach, certainly, but also and undoubtedly dressed in cheaper marble fabrics. The fact is that nineteenth-century patrons of mantels reserved most of their money for the “representative fireplace,” the one in the living room, in short, while with pocket change they paid for fireplaces intended for bedrooms..
That is why it is strange to come across a Pompadour Bombé fireplace (an appellation that was almost a synonym for “thrifty!”) dressed in rather expensive marble!
LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY PERIOD, PARISIAN STYLISM, MARQUINIA BLACK MARBLE OF THE BEST QUALITY (THERE WERE TWO CLASSES OF MARQUINIA MARBLE, THIS ONE IN WHICH THE FRETINGS WERE SEDIMENTARY AND THEREFORE, HOW TO SAY, "STRIPED," AND ANOTHER, IN WHICH THE FOSSILS WERE DISPERSED HOMOGENEOUSLY AND CREATED A KIND OF "MORTADELLA" SURFACE (PARDON THE ADJECTIVE, IT'S DEFINITELY VULGAR, BUT IT CLEARLY EXPLAINS THE "VISUAL" EFFECT) COSTAL FINDING, PERFECT PRESERVATION, EXCELLENT VALUE FOR MONEY.
COMMENT NOT AT ALL SERIOUS, ALMOST AN OUTBURST:
A few evenings ago, on I don't know which TV news program among the thousands that occasionally discuss the fateful ART 18 of the Italian Constitution (which no one, including the contenders, seems to know thoroughly...), this incredible news came out:
Precisely on the basis of this Article 18, a judge has ordered a baker to rehire a baker's boy who had been fired at the time because said lively and robust young man had grown on his head an equally robust as well as highly visible pair of horns...
In short, when his shift was over and well aware that the proprietor would have at least two more hours of it because of the necessary rising of the dough, our apprentice, practicing quite other leavening exercises had a good time with the wife of his proprietor and then, at the village bar, of this lady magnified the thalamus performances....
In the grounds of the judgment, the judge wrote that these were personal facts of the apprentice and did not interfere negatively in the baker's activity.
Who, quiet and blissful, will have to work elbow to elbow with his officially certified cuckold....
Mah...
This news reminded me of another similar incident that occurred in America and about which I had read several years ago: A husband had refused to continue paying his wife's psychiatrist (being treated by this distinguished doctor for frigidity...) after discovering that his spouse's prodigious recovery was thanks to the same psychiatrist's amatory skills generously applied to the patient.
Even in this case the judge condemned the poor cuckold ALSO to bear the costs of further “maintenance sessions,” mica you could risk a ... relapse, NOOOO?!?!
Why do I tell you about these things! Because they seem to me to be a mirror, perhaps an amusing one, of how the Western world (I don't know of any others, so I limit myself to this hemisphere..) is falling down with regard to principles and morality, culture and common sense.
And I relate this “fall” back to the discussion of antique fireplaces, noting how a fireplace like the one I am presenting to you costs around €3000 if antique (thus hand-carved and hand-polished) while, if new (“in style” and spit out by a CNC machine in China or so..), it will cost around twice as much...
The fact is that the major modern fireplace companies sell a thousand times more Pompadour (that's the name of the fireplace model I'm presenting here)..) than we who deal in the authentic.
It seems to me that the skulls of Westerners, Italians at the head of them all, are pulverized, mangled, no longer able to discern where the right one lies.
You tell me if I am wrong, I don't get my head around it anymore.
