Victorian Fireplaces and Mantles
In her book titled A Pleasant Chaos – Victorian Interior Design: Parlors & Sitting Rooms 1870-1890, author Sarah E. Mitchell writes about “Heat Sources.”
Victorian Home Heat Sources
Mitchel states: “Central heating was becoming more common, but many homes still relied on fireplaces or stoves in the parlor for heating that room. (Coal, gas, and wood were all burned.) Parlor stoves were often highly decorated, but most interior design writers believed that a fireplace was more attractive.”
Ornate Victorian Fireplaces
Sarah E. Mitchel points out that: Demorest’s Monthly Magazine reminded its readers in 1883:
“No feature of a room gives to it as much character as the fireplace; and the proper decoration of this center-piece, with the mantel above, deserves all the taste and ingenuity that the lover of home beauty can command.”
Mitchel states, for those who could not afford a professionally-made overmantel, Arthur’s Home Magazine offered directions for a homemade substitute: “….{I}ngenious people have discovered that an over-mantel which is serviceable and eye-pleasing can be made of pine board, neatly covered with cloth for the shelves, and the supports of common thread spools with a rod through them and ebonized. With the addition of a little bric-a-brac and a mirror for the back, this makes an extraordinary good substitute for the expensive over-mantels of the city decorators.”
Mitchel adds: “The fireplace could be decorated either seasonally or all year around with lambrequins and curtains. According to Mrs. Holloway, “The drawing-room fireplaces should always be concealed in summer, for it is rarely handsome or pleasing to look at, and one of the most successful ways for doing this is to arrange silk curtains of a color to accord with the prevailing shade of the furniture of the room.”
