A elaborate George II carved white marble fireplace mantel or chimneypiece by William Kent (1685-1748), designer and architect,
from the Saloon at Devonshire House. The antique mantel is remarkable for its size and richness of decoration. Kent visited Rome in 1715 where he met Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington who became his patron. Boyle encouraged Kent’s interest in architecture when they returned to London together and Kent soon started receiving commissions for buildings and furniture in the classical style. Image credit: Sotheby's (www.sothebys.com)
Washington Irving has called the hearth the rallying place of the affections and certainly there is no single detail of a room which adds so greatly to its beauty and livableness, and which so draws together the dwellers in the home as a cheerful open fireplace. Therefore, the importance of the fireplace mantel cannot be overestimated. A room otherwise beautiful and correct in detail and color may have all of its good points swamped by an unsuitable and inharmonious mantel. To select a design which is in accord with the general plan architectural of the room is essential. There are on the market many chimneypieces and mantels ready to set in place. These are planned to fill the architectural requirements of various rooms of special design.
The importance given the chimneypiece or fireplace mantel in the architecture of the middle eighteenth century and earlier, is shown in the fact that many designers of that period devoted themselves largely to chimneypieces. Woodwork and Interior Decoration in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries gives excerpts from the Chimney-piece Makers Daily Assistant, or A Treasury of New Designs for Chimney-pieces, by Thomas Milton, John Crunden and Placido Columbani. This contains a table giving proper dimensions of antique mantels for various sized rooms which it quaintly states may be applied to the most plain and simple designs and gradually ascend to the grand and magnificent, antique, modern, ornamental and Gothic tastes. There follows a list of rooms in which these may be used.
Many of these suggestions may be well turned to account by the designers of today. The characteristics of the architects and also of most designers of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were so pronounced as to be readily identified. The work of Thomas Johns in chimneypieces girandoles, over-doors, etc., was decidedly rococo in type. Mathias Lock was of the same school. In Jones' study of the Italian renaissance is felt strongly in the chimneypieces of his designing. The close association of the wonderful artist and woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons, with Sir Christopher Wren is evidenced in much of the representative work of the latter. Also in this country and in many of fine New England Colonial houses are beautiful fireplace mantels.
