IT MAY SEEM INELEGANT TO BEGIN A COMMENTARY ON A WORK OF ART BY TALKING ABOUT ITS PRICE, AND AS FAR AS I RECALL, I HAVE NEVER DONE SO.. BUT. THIS TIME I THINK (I can tell that I have a degree in Literature, eh..) THAT IT IS RIGHT NOW TO TALK ABOUT MONEY, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE SO THAT THE POSSIBLE CUSTOMER IS MADE AWARE OF THE REAL VALUE OF THIS WORK AND NOT EVEN THINK THAT HE IS ABOUT TO BE “TURLUPINATED.”
The ten thousand euros we are asking you for is, in essence, an “economical” price, a price formulated on the basis of a purchase cost (which almost never happens) that is really very affordable. And, as our “oldest” customers know (there are people we have been serving for several decades and they will be able to testify to the veracity of what I am writing), you should know that it is our custom, when “cost-saving” purchases happen to us, to turn over (without losing a lira from our fair earnings) this economic advantage to the first customer who will profit from the Occasion.
Now, without getting too complicated, try to download our photographs and get an estimate from one of the best sculptors in Italy (look on the Internet for sculpture workshops in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, the best in the world) and if someone (it will be very difficult) will say he is willing to do it, you specify that the sculpture must be MANUAL AND OF FINE QUALITY ( Our fireplace has FINEST sculpture quality but pretending this is now impossible, go for FINA).. AT THIS POINT VERY PROBABLY the sculptor will disappear altogether because it is now considered normal that it is machines and not hands, who sculpt the “Works of Art”. But let us suppose the incredible case that ONE MASOCHIST SCULPTOR agrees to carve this fireplace in the traditional and right manner, well, THE FEE THAT HE WILL ASK YOU FOR COULD CAUSE A CARDIC COLLAPSE and so I will not even write it down for you. I ONLY TELL YOU THAT, HAVING CONCLUDED THE PROCESS OF SUCH AN ESTIMATE, YOU WILL COME BACK TO US HOPING THAT THE SAID FIREPLACE HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN SOLD.
This model was born in Paris around the year 1850, designed by an architect of the famous Parisian Ateliers d'Art, precisely. It was born from a clearly neoclassical stylistic basis (in essence it is a Louis XVI fireplace to which the otherwise rigid shoulders were -happily- curved to the classic 90°), with the result of greater lightness/softness in its lines. It was immediately a great success that lasted for the next twenty years. To give Caesar his due, the particular (and for that time revolutionary) curvature of its legs was widely taken up by the Art Deco style. If you come to visit us, I can show you at least a dozen Art Deco style and Antique fireplaces with architecture evidently “copied” from our charming Demi-Lune.
THERE IS ONE SPECIAL FEATURE OF IT THAT DIFFERENTIATES THE DEMI-LUNE MANTEL PRESENTED HERE FROM THE VAST MAJORITY OF ITS LITTLE BROTHERS, ITS REMARKABLE HEIGHT, ABOUT TEN CM MORE THAN MOST DEMI-LUNE FIREPLACES. I LIKE IT A LOT, PERHAPS ALSO BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT, FROM THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT, HUMANS HAVE STOOD, AS IT HAPPENS, ABOUT TEN CM TALLER!!!
POST SCRIPTUM: Needless to extol its marble, we all know that Statuary is the most precious and admired marble in the world, and the Arabescato Statuary, precious and appreciated, is even more so.
