Firebacks

Description: Arched rectangular shape; ovolo moulded edging; Tudor royal shield, garter, crown, motto and supporters (crowned lion and dragon), temp. Elizabeth I; initials in space on either side of top of garter; the top of the lion's crown and the dragon's ear overlap the edging.

Notes: The initials have been added to an early recasting; another version has a rose and portcullis either side of the crown, and the top of the lion's crown and the dragon's ear do not overlap the edging.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Inscription: I G / [Garter] HONI SOIT QVI MAL E PENSE / [motto] DIEV ET MON DROIT

Arms: Tudor royal

Description: Arched rectangular shape; stepped cavetto-moulded edging; shiled, suporters, helm, crest, mantling and motto of Clan MacIntosh

Notes: Blazon: Quarterly, 1st, Or, a lion rampant, Gules, armed and langued, Azure (for MacDuff); 2nd, Argent, a dexter hand, couped, fessways, grasping a man’s heart, paleways, Gules; 3rd, Azure, a boar’s head, couped, armed, Proper, and langued, Gules; 4th, Or, a lymphad, sails furled, Azure, flagged and surmounted of her oars in saltire, Gules (for Clan Chattan). The motto means 'Don't touch the cat without a glove'.

Inscription: TOUCH NOT THE CAT BOT A GLOVE

Arms: Clan MacIntosh

Description: Arched rectangular shaped; fillet edging with embattled relief inside; shield, helm, crest and mantling of the Blacksmiths' Company. RN monogram in top right corner.

Notes: Arms of the Blacksmiths' company: Sable, a chevron Or between three hammers Argent and crowned with open crowns of the second; crest: a phoenix in flames rising proper. The arms were granted in 1611. Several different versions of these arms are to be found on firebacks. The attribution of this fireback to the series usually identified by the monogram RN is tentative, it being a copy and a substantial amount of surface detail imperfectly rendered.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Arms: Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths

Description: Arched rectangular shape; twisted rope edging (top, and sides short of bottom), with shoulder edging extending into base of arch; upper centre, date '1602' slanting down to right; below date, initials 'IPD' in triad.

Notes: The initials are likely to be those of a couple whose surname begins with 'P'.

Inscription: 1602 / I P D [triad]

Description: Arched rectangular central panel with bead edging; an inverted, cabled anchor surmounted by a crown, flanked by one initial each side; arched rectangular border with cavetto-moulded edging; top centre, face of a putto with flowing leaf arrangement descending each side.

Notes: An English pastiche of the ‘Dutch’ style of fireback, which became popular in the second half of the seventeenth century. One of a small series of firebacks with similar proportions and detail. Copies of this fireback were advertised in the Wayte & Cheverton (Edenbridge) catalogue in the early-20th century.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Inscription: C R

Description: Arched rectangular shape; ovolo-moulded edging; a shield with the arms of the Grocers' Company on a cartouche, surrounded by four sprays of olive leaves.

Notes: The blazon of the arms is: Argent, a chev­ron gules between nine cloves six in chief and three in base proper. The arms were granted in 1532. The style of the fireback owes something to the design of French firebacks of the mid-17th century.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Arms: Worshipful Company of Grocers

Description: Arched rectangular shape; cavetto moulding (top and sides); date in top corners; shield, supporters, coronet and motto of the Barony of Bergavenny.

Notes: The arms are those of William Nevill, 16th Baron Bergavenny, of Kidbrooke Park, Forest Row, Sussex; the arms have been modified by the omission of the motto below the compartment.

Inscription: 17 37

Arms: William Nevill, 16th Baron Bergavenny

Description: Arched rectangular shape with rounded corners; ovolo within fillet moulding all round; oval Tudor royal shield with garter surrounding, topped with a royal crown; dragon and greyhound supporters; initials split by crown; inscription on a fillet between legs of supporters, behind garter finial; motto on an Ionic plinth at bottom; two rectangular side panels, each with a bird stamp (probably a swan, a Lancastrian badge) above a vine strip stamp repeated three times vertically.

Notes: One of two known variants of the John Harvo fireback incorporating extension panels with vine strips and 'swans'; the positions of the swans vary slightly between the two variants. Formerly at the old post office, Ticehurst, Sussex.

Inscription: E R / HONY SOIT QUE MAL Y PAYNCE

Arms: Tudor royal - prob. Edward VI

Description: Quasi-Arched rectangular shape with cyma reversa shoulders; ovolo edging; stylised lion passant guardant; crowned rose with leaf and stem on left, crowned fleur de lys on right, thistle with leaves above centre; three right-facing scrolls at base; down-facing scroll, with staple, on right side; date split between bottom corners; initials below date, bottom right.

Notes: Blatantly Royalist in its symbolism, a variant (no. 763) is dated (perhaps less convincingly) 1649. Numeral style, initials, leaf depiction and the stapled scroll are typical features of firebacks made from patterns by the same maker. A later version of the same subject, but with a different shaped plate and without the fleur-de-lys, is also known (see 'Royalist series'). M. A. Lower writes of this design of fireback being cast at Waldron Furnace in Sussex (Lower, 1849, p.219). Inferior copies of this fireback were advertised in Kings Worthy Foundry's (Winchester) catalogue in the mid-20th century.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Inscription: 16 41 / IM

Description: Arched rectangle; twisted rope edging (top and sides); central date at bottom of arch.

Inscription: 1670