Firebacks

677mm wide

  1. 81

    guildford_museum 06.jpg
    677 x 620 mm
    Image subject to copyright

    Description: Rectangular with two mirrored scrolls on top, a lion’s face between; bas-relief semi-circle edging (sides and bottom); central pilaster with vine scrolling, Corinthian capital, initials on the pedestal; on either side, an arched alcove, each with a halberdier in mid-17th century clothes, their feet pointing to the middle.

    Notes: Stylistically similar to the Lenard fireback (no. 429), the initials also appear on other firebacks, possibly from Brede. All known examples of this fireback are poorly modelled and cast.

    Copies of this fireback are known.

    Inscription: IM

    Manufactured: in the early- to mid-17th century possibly at Brede Furnace in the Weald area of England.

    Current location: Guildford Museum, Guildford, Surrey, England.

    Museum number: S.7108 (part of the Guildford Museum museum group)

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

    Citation: Hodgkinson, J. S., 2014, 'A Seventeenth-Century Sussex Woodcarver: The Evidence of Cast Ironwork', Regional Furniture, 28, pp. 39-48.

    Citation: Lloyd, N., 1925, 'Domestic Ironwork I', Architectural Review, 58, pp. 58-67.