I do not want to bore you, however, I cannot refrain, in commenting on a mantel belonging to the large Pompadour Plat family, to speak, precisely, about its family, which is by far, the most numerous in the field of fireplaces.
This time, however, the mantel I am presenting to you has important and clear differences from its thousand little brothers, let us see them together, if you like...
First of all its size, cm 134 wide, how come it is so big when the average width of its siblings is cm 110! The measurements were generally very small because this Plat model was put in rooms or entrances and for these uses people tried to spend little, saving the money for the purchase of the “representative” fireplace, that is, the fireplace of the Hall. It is therefore very likely that the mantel I am presenting here was intended, if not for a salon in the palace of Versailles, at least for the medium-sized room of its owner, evidently less wealthy than many other Parisian bourgeois.
Then its lines, partly taken from Louis XIV elements (the shelf, for example), very elegant lines, from which we can see the good pencil of the architect who designed this fireplace.
But perhaps the most striking feature is the absolute lack of drawings in the front and/or sides.. Its marble slabs are happily “very clean,” deliberately clean, devoid of patterns grooved into the marble, a kind of search for Purity.
In short, in this mantel is clear the search for a greater elegance, for a “Something more” a little like what happened to the 500 FIAT, a basic model of Italic motorization, which, from time to time, was presented in a different way, think of the 500 L (the elle stood for LUXURY and had chrome fenders) or the 500 R ( it was motorized with the powerful (so to speak, eh..) engine of the FIAT 600 and, to finish, with the 500 Abarth, speed to power.
Whoever built it also took into account the quality of the marble, a beautiful “White P” with very homogeneous slabs between them (which does not happen often).
