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GEORGIAN FIREPLACE DESIGN AND SOURCING

As with much of the architecture of its time Georgian fireplace design was based on the classical orders and followed strict rules of proportion whilst employing a rich and varied range of decorative devices.

The first half of the century saw Palladian architectural influence in the ascendancy but fireplace design was revolutionised mid-century by Robert Adam, who substituted a new and elegant repertoire based on a wide variety of classical sources. Fireplaces acquired a lighter and less robust appearance displaying crisply executed low relief carving and the use of inlaid coloured marble became popular, providing a striking contrast to the remainder of the fireplace which was always worked from statuary marble.

In the early 18th Century ‘eared’ chimney surrounds were also derived from door and window surrounds. The jambs might be plain, or with elongated consoles, or treated as pilasters, or might boast freestanding columns while the horizontal member above the opening was treated as an entablature and the mantelshelf as a cornice.

Alongside the conventional forms of rectangular tablet over the hearth, plain or carved with some mythological or decorative scene, newer treatments appeared. Some of the more fashionable designers like Robert Adam chose to alter proportions of their chimney openings, changing the traditional rectangular opening to something broader.

Adam is also credited for introducing decorative ornament on essentially flat surfaces. The ornament might be inlaid into or more commonly, placed on the surfaces of a chimney surround. There are some examples of such ornament in the 1760 but it becomes more widespread in the 1780’s.

As early as the 1780s the use of reeded decoration was becoming popular, both in timber and in marble chimneypieces. It conveyed the impression of fluting and reeded chimneypiece jambs were frequently used as an alternative to fluted pilasters.

Around 1800 chimneypieces began to appear with roundels at the junction of the jambs and the entablature beneath the mantelshelf. In a very short time the combination of reeding and roundels had evolved into a classic late Georgian design.

Carved console jambs are typical of the 1730s ad 1740s. From the mid 18th Century onwards there was an increasing diversity in chimneypiece forms.



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