A PAIR OF CLASSICAL PAINTED AND GILT FIRESCREENS

細節
A PAIR OF CLASSICAL PAINTED AND GILT FIRESCREENS
NEW YORK, 1810-1815

Each with painted and gilded tablet made of tongue-and-grooved boards,one with printed scene of a cathedral set in a country venue, the other with a cathedral overlooking a lake, each attached to a cylindrical pole with turned cap and brass adjustable rings above a ring-turned standard, on three klismos waterleaf-carved and reeded legs set on wooden balls--57 3/4in. high (2)
來源
Van Buren Family, New York
Maurice P. Van Buren
William Doyle Galleries, April 22, 1987

拍品專文

"The glare of candle light so often is very painful to my eyes, and I have made attempts to soften and improve it by a shade so as to bring it nearer to the natual light of day" (Charles Montgomery, American Furniture, (New York 1966), p. 243). This quote from the early 1800's, captures the conflict between the need for light in the evening and the "scorching heat" emitted by a fire or candle. The desire for protection from the heat emitted from firelight was answered by the use of pole or firescreens, "which were used to shelter the face or legs from the fire" (Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet Dictionary, (London 1803), p. 302).

Although utilitarian, firescreens were also decorative pieces of furniture that were incorporated into one's fashionable household. As the designer George Smith recommended:

These articles of general use admit of every species of
decoration; viz. of entire gold, bronze and gold, or
japanned; of mahogany, rose or satinwood; as the apartment
they may be destined for shall require. The mounts, if
expense be not regarded, may be carved solid in wood
and embellished with painted decoration. (A Collection
of Designs for Household Furniture
(London, 1808,
pp. 19-20)

The 1810 New York Revised Prices for Manufacturing of Cabinet and Chair-work described the fashionable design of a "Pole Screen" as an object that was meant "to stand on three claws, the pillar and pole turned." The labor cost of manufacturing the pole was 11 shillings. The screeen itself, or the "Mounts for the Pole Screens" were noted as "A square straining screen," at a cost of three shillings. If one wanted a more elaborate screen, "Canting the corners of ditto," such as relates to this example, cost one shilling more. The actual cost to the consumer would have been approximately three times the amount advised for the journeymen's wages in the price book.

The pair of pole or firescreens illustrated here relate to the form outlined in the price book. The term "claws," a descriptive word with its origins in the last few decades of the eighteenth century, refers not to the representation of animal feet, but to the arched legs. Firescreens were often made individually rather than in pairs; hence this pair represents a rare and possibly unique survival of an integral as well as ornamental part of the functional household.