Looking at this monumental fireplace, the first thing that jumps to my eye and heart is its personality....
And it occurs to me that, perhaps, in the world, there are those who would want to do so precisely by virtue of the fact that said fireplace might represent HIS personality.
If back in my day (my youth was in the late 1960s) it was possible to understand something about the person you had just seen, say, by the fact that he was wearing an eskimo (if it was green with a red scarf, he was a member of Lotta Continua, if the eskimo was white, you could be sure that its owner was a fop pretending to be busy...) or wearing a “duffle coat” and then you could bet he was the son of a doctor or a high school teacher... His car (if he had one..) also helped a lot to understand his personality. You would see a boy in a Dyane 2CV and immediately know that the driver was a hippie idealist.... If, on the other hand, he drove around in a strictly black Golf that was always very shiny, he was a young right-wing man (moderate, eh... the hottest ones didn't have a car, they were hot because they were on hard bills...). But there was also the “Renault 4 muddy up to the top” type, he was an old-fashioned ecologist, anti-nuclearist par excellence and politically committed to the left as far left as possible. AND SO ON, I COULD GO ON AND ON, SO MANY WERE THE HUMAN TYPES.
Today this is no longer the case, today they are all dressed alike.... If young people have jeans all pierced that look like they've just been in a big car accident, old people (deluded that a suit makes a young man a monk) have the same jeans, except they don't have holes.... The cars are all the same, identical soaps from a Japanese comic strip in whose cockpit is always the exact same indecipherable person, always glued to the same cell phone (the latest fashionable one..) at the risk of his own life and the lives of others.
Even for fireplaces (I am referring to modern, newly manufactured fireplaces..) the same thing is happening, the vast majority of buyers are not buying a fireplace, but a steel thing that looks like a painting (or a TV set) and like a painting is suspended (with serious torticollis problems for those who, rightly, intend to enjoy the charms of the flame..) at varying heights depending on the taste of the architect or interior designer. They are all with 90-degree angles, these “fireplaces,” cubes without poetry, all more or less rectangular, strictly...SIGNED!!! And to me, being of the old guard, it comes to mind that not even Archimedes would have had the courage to sign a rectangle!!! Instead these self-styled “designers” have all the courage, and so far, patience. What I don't like is that they are followed by a plethora of gullible people, to whom it has been explained (and they have drunk it like gold) that the real beauty lies in LEGO-like cubes.
Poor Italy!!!
IN CONCLUSION OF THIS TIRADE, IF YOU WHO ARE READING ME WISH TO DIVERSIFY YOURSELF FROM THE MASSES, AND MOREOVER TO ENJOY A TRULY ARTISTIC OBJECT, INTRINSICALLY ARTISTIC, VISCERALLY AND UNDOUBTEDLY ARTISTIC, PUT THIS ANTIQUE FIREPLACE IN YOUR DWELLING, AND YOUR PERSONALITY WILL COME OUT IMMEDIATELY.
Of course you will have to come to terms with its measurements; here we are closer to a monument than a fireplace.
Its decorative load, then, can put the vast majority of modern sculptors to shame, few of them, unfortunately, would be able to make such sculptures, those festoons (called “Versailles”) made of laurel leaves, those circular “rosettes” that you see on the front and also on the counter hearth, parallelism of course coming from the counter hearth itself, since from there, one would start to build the fireplace, from the choice of the counter hearth. Once chosen and purchased, the sculptor would carve the chimney following the lines of this same “accessory” and not as so many people think, the other way around, that is, first make the carving and then cast a custom-made counter hearth.. It would have cost ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
There are so many of its decorations that I would bore you if I tried to make a list of them, I will just tell you that its name (“MACARON”) comes from the sort of braid that in the front creates so many small circles, each containing a flower.. Well know that that design is in the “cosmatesque” style, a Roman style that found its greatest expression in the invention of fantastic mosaics, from which, evidently, the Parisian ateliers des Arts were inspired when they designed this fireplace.
AT THE BOTTOM OF ALL THE IMAGES OF THE MANTEL PUBLISHED IN THIS SHEET I ATTACH A FEW PHOTOGRAPHS OF COSMATESQUE MOSAIC FROM THE ROMAN PERIOD, BY WAY OF PROOF OF THE ABOVE STATEMENT, NAMELY, THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT DECORATIVE ELEMENT OF THIS SPECIMEN WITH THE VERY FRENCH NAME IS... ITALIANISSIMO!!!
PARIS, SECOND EMPIRE PERIOD, PERFECT PRESERVATION AND PATINA, PRICE LAUGHABLE EVEN IF IT SEEMS HIGH BECAUSE, ASSUMING AND NOT GRANTING THAT A SCULPTOR WOULD AGREE TO MAKE A COPY, HIS PECUNIARY DEMAND COULD BE BETWEEN THREE OR FOUR TIMES WHAT WE ARE ASKING YOU.
CAST IRON INSERT EXCLUDED, OF COURSE!
