THE FIRE-PLACE IN ARCHITECTURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17177, 22 October 1923, Page 11

THE FIRE-PLACE IN ARCHITECTURE.

A STUDY IN DESIGNS. Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill—j But let it whistle as it will. Soott. Mart is inherently a fire-worshipper. Heraclitus, the early Greek philosopher, considered fire to be the origin of substance, the primary element. In the temple of Vesta, the goddess of the Jiom >, there was no statue but the eternal fire on the altar, symbolic of the hearth. And the modem heating engineer, with ali his science* has failed to supplant tlie open fire. *Tis merry in the hall when beards wag.” but they could never be so merry lound a radiator, or a hot-air pipe! The hearth must always hold its own ; n’t turn towards it instinctively; it seems to form the central point, whether the fire is alight or not. Tlie fireplace, and the mantel which surrounds it, should be designed with special care. Not only is it an integral portion of the structure, but. is probably* owing to its function, more continuously looked upon than any other feature of the room. An ordinary piece of furniture may be moved, but the mantel-piece is fixed ; it should therefore, w hether simple or elaborate, form the keynote /of the decorative scheme. ESSENTIALS OF HARMONY. This point is most- essential. If the mantel has panelling, for instance, it should correspond with the panels cf th© doors —more glorified, perhaps, but retaining a similar feeling, while- rhe •beauty of a Georgian fireplace is 'largely lost without a corresponding note in the architraves, or cornice. The whole must be knit into one complete system of design. The fundamental principal of architecture lies in the ornamenting of construction, and not the construction of ornament; in other words,# th© mantel should noo appear in any way as an excrescence. Nor should the general style of the bouse be overlooked. The fireplace should show the influence of the exterior design, as well as of the det ,ils within. For example. in a week-end cottage, perched among the fulls, it is natural to find a rough stone fkeplao.e with ample hobs, where boots may dry, or the kettle be kept warm, and the pointed arch continued up beyond the lintel-beam, suggestive of the mountain-side, or the roof’s steep slope. But, in the city, or congested suburbs, these thing are merely out of place, like a golf-coat at a- dinner party. The conditions offer no excuse, and. therefore, it is absurd. In tha cne. it is the logical sequence of honest building, the rugged chimney show- 1 ing through on the inside of the wall; in ’the other, it is a misguided affectation. In any case, the quest of quaintness is always a fairly perilous adventure. The thing itself must happen naturally, like a- rustic dialect; it must- r.ot be assumed. CHOICE OF TREATMENT IN BRICK Jfc is the same with, brick. Brick is generally admirable for fireplacee interiors. Being made in the furnace, it withstands the heat of the fire ■without cracking or calcination ; it is at ways neat when properly built, and refleets the light of the flames with a cheerful glow. But, again, distorted brickbats and ugly blue-black “clinkers,” crazed and pimpled like a. piece of slag, slung in with a wide- uneven joint, have no •raison d’etre” at all. They might be very well for a railway tunnel, or a foundry, and they might possibly have slightly higher fire-resisting qualities, hut the subject of this article is the domestic, hearth, and. from that standpoint, we must fail to see any intrinsic beauty in a piece of imitation slag. Sometimes, by way of variation, the followers of this strange cult flush up the. joints, and daub the whole with black paint, with a little white line, possibly to indicate the submerged joint beneath, or else to showup the blackness in its true colour. It is difficult to imagine anything more depressing.

POSSIBILITIES OF ERROR IN TASTE. On the other hand. good, clean brickwork, preferably red, is excellent, lending itself to endless varieties of design. Occasionally there is opportunity to have th© fireplace made entirely of brick, but here the designer must walk warily, or the result will be mere clumsiness. The desir© for effect may easily exceed the limits of propriety. This is commonly seen carried to a logical conclusion by the speculative builder, with, as its result, the ultimate in bad taste. As a general rule, the wooden mantel is more successful. Good and practical though brick may be, there are places where a finer finish is desired, such a** milady’s boudoir or a drawing-room. In these cases glazed tiles are used. With a grate they are. in' fact, necessary. But the danger of tiles is that they are apt to tie the room to one scheme of colour continuously. “ Tea-pot ” browns and deep greens are fairly safe with dark wood, while dull greys or “ complex ” blues, or other neutral colours, are best suited to go with white. If the room bo Targe and the mantel rich, enough, a fine effect may be obtained. with dark marble—black veined with white, for instance. This will look excellent with a tall Renaissance mantel in walnut or mahogany. But it takes some little pomp and circumstance to stand a marble fireplace (T refer to the open variety) and it might be slightly out of place in the majority of homes.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SCALE. The most important point in architectural design is scale: all other details are subsidiary. Th© fireplace may be the centre, the culminating point, perhaps, but though it dominates, it must not overpower the room. Whether rustic or classic, a successful result can only be obtained by a strict adherence to correct proportions. Neglect of this balance i s one bf the commonest faults in modern domestic design. Tt is for th© same reason that furniture purchased in the shops to-dav so frequently has the appearance of crowding the room in which it is set. Extent doe s not necessarily mean clumsiness, any more than simplicity can be attained bv meanness, a fact of which our forbears were particularly sensible. 'The old English brick was smaller than our modern one, which has much to do with the pleasing effect of the old brick fireplace, which was more proportionate to the size of the average room. Sometimes an. additional texture was given by building the fireback in herringboone pattern, ero with bands of tiles on the flat, and the result is absolutely charming. Much may be done in the scale by the siz© of theVmouldings in the mantelpiece. Even when it runs the full height to tho ceiling, the scale of the component parts, if correctly balanced, will enhance the proportions, instead of competing with the room. POSITION OF THE FIREPLACE. Similarly, th© clas s of fireplace must conform to the functions of the room to which it. belongs. A drawing-room, which really is a drawing-room, with , Sheraton, furniture, let us say, and

slender porcelain ornaments, might adapt itself to the Adam f=tylc, or the American Colonial. The dining-room usually requires something heavier-- something with, say. a. Dutch or Jacobean feeling; the library seems to ask for the discreet and homely Georgian ; while for a general living-room, if large enough, a wide old-fasliioned farm house fireplace may possibly be suitable. But all of these must, of course, bear a direct relat'ynship to the remainder of the house. In this hysterical age is a. groat need pf sanity in art (and in architecture jt of all) the desire for which, I axn glad to say, appears to have already begun to grow. In choosing a position for the fireplace, two points must be borne in mind. The first is protection from draught and the second the necessity of light. I refer principally to roon*> of the living-room type. Dining-rooms an-d bedroom* come under a different category. One generally sits by the fire to read or write, or possibly one may wish to see outside. In any case, a gloomy corner is undesirable, while a draughty one is useless. THE DECORATIVE AND UTILITARIAN. There is an odd idea that- man-tels were invented solely to support a shelf, on which all sorts of rubbish in the way of nick-nacks may be heaped, and the appearance of many a good room has thu* been ruined. The shelf originated in the kitchen, being there as a place for candle-sticks while cooking, and other culinary requisites. Later, with the advent of the Renaissance. the more dignified room* were adorned with mantels showing the classic influence, and including an entablature, upon the projection of which an ornament, or, again, the candlesticks, were sometimes plated. In the illogical trend of recent year* the thing has become all shelf, with no decorative qualities. A thuee-inoli plank twelve inches wide, on several projecting bricks-bats, Ip ay hare its uses, but still the shelfless mantel has much to recommend it as a decoration. And. after all, the mantel-piece is only a detail of decoration, so let us treat it as such by producing something interesting and reasonable : “Pare form, nakedly displayed, Aad all tliiugs absolutely made." *' Australian Home Builder.”