MONUMENTAL AS MUCH AS SPECTACULAR ART NOUVEAU FIREPLACE (ON REGENCY ARCHITECTURAL LAYOUT) IN FASCINATING AND NOW SOLD-OUT ITALIAN BLACK VARENNA MARBLE, ALSO PRESENTED HERE THROUGH AN IMAGE (THE SECOND ONE) THAT SHOWS IT AS WE ARE BEGINNING TO DISMANTLE IT FROM THE VILLA ON COMO LAKE IN WHICH IT WAS LOCATED, PERIOD EARLY DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, EXCELLENT PRESERVATION.
I already know that someone will ask. "But how come, Maurizio, they decided to disassemble it to sell it to you?Maybe this fireplace is so bad that they had to get rid of it!”
Then I'll immediately offer the answer: “The fact is that in the eastern country (I'll give you a hint about the name of that country: They all have eyes like Berlusca there, almond-shaped..) of the buyer of this fabulous villa, the color Black brings sf... bad luck... I am told by the architect who supervised and took care of the work on this house that as soon as our yellow man saw that black chimney (actually another one too), he jumped and almost wanted to terminate the contract to purchase the property. Then, fortunately for me (but also for the one who will buy this specimen, because, calculating the stratospheric prices that fireplaces of a certain importance and made of Black Varenna marble as this one is, he will benefit), the yellow man opted to dismantle the two black fireplaces in that existing villa to replace them with two other fireplaces obviously purchased by us.
ARE YOU SATISFIED NOW?
(I write “Satisfied” in the feminine because a man would never ask such malicious questions; we little men are simpler, and much, much better...)
THE PRICE OF THIS UNOBTAINABLE UNIQUE PIECE IS TO BE CONSIDERED NOT “LOW” AS I WROTE ABOVE, BUT RATHER OFFENSIVE TO THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR FIREPLACE, OFFENSIVE TO THE LOMBARD MASTER WHO CARVED IT, OFFENSIVE TO THE ARCHITECT WHO DESIGNED IT (I HAD FORGOTTEN TO TELL YOU: THIS MANTEL IS A UNIQUE PIECE, DESIGNED AND MADE ON PRIVATE COMMISSION FOR THIS VILLA ONLY. NO TWO IN THE WORLD ARE ALIKE), ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW MUCH SO-CALLED “IN STYLE” SPECIMENS MADE TONIGHT IN CHINA AND MARKETED BY MODERN FIREPLACE BRANDS COST...
A prominent thinker/philosopher/whatever (don't ask me the name, it's bad enough that I remember the concept..) wrote that the past and the future count for nothing, that only the present is reality, and therefore life, existence...
It seems to me, this statement, to be a great boondoggle.
We are what the Past has allowed us to become and we dream of the Future..
It is not right, therefore to deny the Past because we are made of It and it is not right that we should be denied the possibility of the Dream, obviously futuristic by definition..
The ancient elegance of this fireplace has, perhaps even in a billionth part, contributed to the good taste of our ancestors and, by reflection, to our good taste..
And if my dream is that our contemporaries do not decide to dishearten themselves cerebrally by placing in their homes those hideous steel rectangles that today many modern “designers” call fireplaces, who would ever have the courage (and the strength) to stop me from dreaming?
