January, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



37 



And now as to style. There is no part of our house in 

 which every period of architectural design is more frequently 

 utilized, helter-skelter. What would look most suitable in 

 the average bedroom of our unpretentious country house 

 would be a plain wooden frame of a hard wood, well-sea- 

 soned, so as neither to crack, shrink, or warp. After being 

 well filled it should, if the remainder of the room is painted, 

 receive four or, even better, five coats of paint. On top of 

 the frame place a shelf supported and connected by a suffi- 

 cient bedmold to the moldings below. Project it from eight 

 to twelve inches from the wall. Make your facing of equal 

 dimensions on the top as on the sides. A great portion of 

 the simpler ready made mantels derive their stilted appear- 

 ance from the fact that the facing above the opening is much 

 too large in proportion to the facings of the sides. 



If you are uncertain as to the style of your mantel, in a 

 room of a decided architectural period, you can do no better 



8 — A Good Copy of an Old English Type 



than also conscientiously to carry out your mantel in the 

 style of the room. Nothing could have looked as charming 

 or in better keeping with the room in illustration No. i as 

 its Louis XVI mantel. It is absolutely historically correct, 

 probably a copy of an old one of the best design of the 

 period. It has the low mantel shelf, in Louis XVI work, sel- 

 dom above 4 feet 3 inches, the broad ornamented frieze, with 

 neither classical architrave nor cornice molds, the curved iron 

 facings, and wide opening. Illustration No. 2 gives another 

 mantel of the same period. They are both simple and re- 

 strained, especially in comparison with the immediately pre- 

 ceding style of Louis XV, illustration No. 4. Here the treat- 

 ment is generally artificially unrestrained, again character- 

 istic of the decoration of its time. There is hardly a straight 

 outline of an unbroken surface. The moldings and angles are 

 broken by shells and conventionalized scrollwork. The lin- 

 ings and facings are of cast iron with elaborate figures. 



Both of the French mantels are, however, in strict con- 

 formity with the surrounding decorations designed and 

 studied in connection with the mirrors and panels surround- 

 ing them. In illustration No. 5, the mantel has become a 

 regular monument in its room, as striking as a monumental 

 sepulchral composition on the bare walls of a chapel. It is 

 modeled after earlier periods marked by the importance or 

 clumsiness given to their design. The great bulk of masonry 

 takes one back to the French castles of the fourteenth and 

 fifteenth centuries, where groups of guards would warm them- 

 selves around the logs at each end of the great hall. It does 

 not show the careful study and treatment, for instance, of the 

 early French Renaissance mantels of the Chateau de Cadillac. 

 For successful French treatment, merely from a point of view 

 of monumental mantel design, we must, however, search in 

 the later periods of Louis XIV and Louis XV, when such men 

 as David Marot, Berain, etc., were executing their conscien- 



9 — Of Colonial Type, but Slightly Mongrel 



tious work. In illustration No. 7, we have a good type of 

 the hooded Renaissance mantel. 



For our common, every day household needs, we must, I 

 believe, go to another period of architecture to procure man- 

 tels in harmony with the surroundings of our daily life. In 

 England we find the greater portion of their prototypes. 

 Mantels similar to those in Wilton House, Knousley Hall, 

 Belton House, etc., are the direct historic predecessors of 

 some of our best Colonial ones. Even in the great residences 

 similar to Hampton Court Palace or Holmes Lacy, Hereford, 

 if we omit the carvings of the overmantels and thereby ob- 

 serve the simple, restrained proportions of Inigo Jones' work, 

 we find numberless variations of the forms and general pro- 

 portions we are to-day fittingly employing. We can rob the 

 whole fireplace and mantel from the old English living and 

 dining-rooms (illustration No. 8) and set them up in our 

 own country house and they will look almost as much at home 



