Firebacks

476mm wide

  1. 215

    brighton_museum 07.jpg
    476 x 702 mm

    Description: Arched rectangular central panel with canted, cavetto-canted shoulders and bead edging on a broad fillet; seated female figure in a chariot drawn by dogs, symmetrical hanging drapery above right; same-shaped border with fillet edging at top, and suspended ribbons with floral bunches; at base, symmetrical palm leaves tied with ribbon; symmetrical serpents on top their tails intertwined.

    Notes: The design is derived from a personification of America, one of a set of playing cards entitled Jeu de la Géographie, designed by Stefano della Bella (1677). The pattern for this fireback, from which the protuberances above the serpents’ heads is missing, is in Rottingdean Grange (no. 930). The pattern, however, has a base panel of a chain-link design, which is missing from this casting.

    Copies of this fireback are known.

    Manufactured: in the late-17th to early-18th century possibly in the Weald area of England.

    Current location: Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton, East Sussex, England.

    Museum number: HATMP002214 (part of the Brighton Museum museum group)

    Citation: Hodgkinson, J. S., 2010, British Cast-Iron Firebacks of the 16th to Mid-18th Centuries (Crawley, Hodgers Books).