I N feudal England 
tihe fireplace, as 
we know it now, was 
a rarity. Instead a 
raised stone or brick 
hearth was built in 
tbe center of the 
great living-rooms or 
halls, and the smoke 
from the fire curled 
up among the high 
roof - trusses and 
found its way out 
through a ventilator 
at the ridge. The 
Donjon - Towers of 
the castles, however, 
with their several sto¬ 
ries, presented a dif¬ 
ferent problem; here 
a low niche was 
scooped in the side 
wall and a flue car¬ 
ried up several feet 
and out through a 
slit in the side of the 
tower. Under the 
Tudor kings this be¬ 
came a fireplace much 
as we have it to-day, 
a development that, 
on the Continent, had 
taken place years be¬ 
fore ; but the great 
overhanging hoods of 
France or Northern 
Italy were not copied 
by the English, whose 
fireplaces were gen¬ 
erally cut into the 
wall instead of being built out from it, and 
decorated with fiat tracery and cusping, some¬ 
times surmounted with a moulding which be¬ 
came the mantel-shelf of later times. The 
Continental fireplace was tremendous, taking 
up in certain cases almost the entire end of 
a large room; but under the Renaissance it 
gradually lost its importance, until in Louis 
Fifteenth’s time it had become little more 
than an incident in the panelling. 
In England, however, its importance in¬ 
creased with the Renaissance; under Eliza¬ 
beth and James First it was set in a project¬ 
ing mass of masonry, highly ornamented at 
the sides and above the fireplace opening with 
pilasters, arches, niches, carved figures or 
strap-work, complex in the highest degree and 
absurd at times. Skilled labor was plentiful; 
religious persecution had driven into England 
great numbers pf Flemings, Belgians and the 
L ow Dutch, trained in the crude and distorted 
iU5B^ 
An interior in the Jacobean manner. Characteristics are the small panels of the oak wainscot, the import 
ance given the chimney breast and the delicate interlaced ceiling tracery 
classic forms that 
were then the last 
word of architectural 
decoration. 
In remote districts 
the English workman 
held his own ; he used 
the new motives, ig¬ 
norantly, it is true, 
but with reserve, and 
at the same time 
clung to the familiar 
forms of his tradi- 
t i o n, forms which 
later were to be utter¬ 
ly cast ofif, considered 
relics of a barbarous 
age and contemptu¬ 
ously alluded to as 
“Gothic.” 
“Jacobean” is the 
name given this pe¬ 
riod of transition. Of 
course, the struggle 
between the old style 
and the new applies 
to all English deco¬ 
rative work of the 
period, though it is 
more easily detected 
in architecture than 
in other arts. The 
THE JACOBEAN—A TRANSITIONAL PERIOD IN WHICH WOOD¬ 
WORK FURNISHED THE MOTIF—FIREPLACES OF THE TIME AND 
THEIR MODERN REPRODUCTIONS 
Alfred Morton Githens 
A corner of overmantel in detail, char¬ 
acteristic of the period throughout and 
showing the peculiar Jacobean interpre¬ 
tation of classic forms 
struggle waxed and 
waned; under Eliza¬ 
beth the old forms 
had been almost en¬ 
tirely crowded out by 
a riot of debased 
classic, as fantastic in 
its way as the habit 
her Court gentleman had of dyeing a lock of 
his hair scarlet and tying it with a ribbon. 
Under James First there seems to have been 
a return to the sanity and tranquil dignity of 
the old tradition. 
Such is the type we have taken for this 
paper. Most characteristic is the pleasant 
monotony of the rectangular wood panelling. 
Many manor-houses have an “Oak Room" 
similarly wainscoted. This is an inheritance 
from earlier English work, and there is a sug¬ 
gestion of older forms, too, in the curved 
stone supports at the sides of the fireplace 
opening and in the Tudor arch spanning it. 
The little wooden pilasters above are Flemish 
in origin; the wooden cornice, of course, quite 
classic; the plaster tracery of the ceiling a de¬ 
velopment of a Tudor decoration. We make 
no apology for this erudition; a period style 
we have set ourselves to adopt, so we will do 
it consistently and turn a deaf ear to any sug- 
26 
