Fireplaces Without Fires

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 409, 18 July 1928, Page 7

Fireplaces Without Fires

UTILISING WASTE SPACE Pleasing Summer-time Alterations A REALLY fine fireplace is such an important feature of the room in which it lives that it seldom requires any summer-time alteration. Indifferent fireplaces do, and if the beauty of a room is to be unimpaired by ugly iron grates the waste space must be utilised in some way. It lias been the custom to concentrate on fire-screens, but here are some other methods of overcoming the difficulty.

In an old-fasliioned open fireplace,: where nothing but large logs of wood j are burnt, there is seldom need for j hot weather alteration. Two or three j logs in an original fireplace in an [ old house are pleasant to look at even j when they are not alight and the day ! is hot; but basket grates, well-fires, ' and all the variations that lie between them, do not add to the decorative scheme when they are not in actual use. however lovely the fireplace may be as a whole. In order to conceal the empty grate in an effective and agreeable manner one should first consider the general feeling of the room. In some rooms, and with some fireplaces only a very little attention is necessary in order to transform something dull and temporarily out of harmony with the weather into something which is definitely good to look upon. A fine basket grate in a fine fireplace is an example of this. The paper and sticks and coal, or the trim piece of brown paper concealing them which so many housewives think inseparable from the fireplace, even during a heat wave, can be banished to make way for fir cones, or, better still, for fragrant pomanders made of oranges stuck with cloves. The neat well or bar-grate fire lends itself to many different kinds of treatment. One of the simplest is a curtain of velvet or heavy silk hung on one of those elastic wire hangers just beneath the wooden moulding which outlines the tiles. This curtain may be in black, deep plum or blue-green, according to the colouring in the room and the effect you want to produce, and will form a good background for flowers. Red or yellow roses in an old Spanish bowl are wonderful in such a setting. For formal rooms, or rooms that are definitely modern and severe in their arrangement, a variation of this curtain idea is preferable, because of its more austere effect. This consists of a frame made to fit either the actual opening of the grate or the moulding round the tiles, or, possibly, for a fireplace which has no cliimneypiece and is merely finished with a moulding. The question as to what to put inside the frame may be answered in many different ways. Old English, old JE- ■ ....

i Poi-tuguese. or old Chinese needlework j are among the first things which sug- £ gest themselves for rooms in which 1 ; they will find congenial companions. | A painting can be used in this way ( j with remarkably good results, but it ’ i should be a landscape or seascape, i | not a portrait, and it should be chosen ] j very largely because the artist has i: j painted it from a height. ! A picture of this order is more I kindly placed in a position like the one j we are discussing, and where it will be ; almost always seen from above than j in any other. It will also gain from ! the fact that it does not always live j in the same place on the wall; like the many unfortunate pictures to which one becomes so accustomed that one no longer sees them, hut will be sometimes present and sometimes absent, and will therefore strike one with fresh pleasure each time it appears. It is possible that neither a picture nor a piece of old needlework may fit the needs of a particular room or the purse of its owner, hut there remain other fabrics which are capable of solving the problem with distinction. Some of the modern upholstery materials are eminently suitable for the purpose. Some of the reproductions of old ones are better for a room in which old furnishings are more at , home than new ones; and in cases where use has been made of a lovely chintz or printed silk, possibly even ol’ a printed or painted chiffon with a thin silk lining, an electric bulb set in the fireplace behind the framed material will produce an unusual effect of charm at night. Hot weather is not the only reason for wondering what to do with a fireplace in which there is no fire. The prevalent fashion for throwing two rooms into one in order to acquire the maximum feeling of space that a small house will permit has produced many rooms in which there are two fireplaces, hut in which central heating or an electric radiator have eliminated the necessity for building a fire in more than one of them. In any case it is always possible to j make an improvement and once you i have decided whether your fireplace i demands a temporary or a permanent j alteration, it is usually simple enough j to bring about the transformation you ! desire.