Fireboard

A fireboard or chimney board is a decorative art panel designed to cover a fireplace during the warm months of the year.[1] It was "commonly used during the later 18th and early 19th centuries"[2] in places like France and New England. In warm weather, "a fireboard effectively reduced the number of mosquitoes and other insects, or even birds, that might enter a house through an open, damperless chimney."[3] The "board or shutterlike contrivance" typically "of wood or cast of sheet metal"[4] is "frequently decorated with painting and stencilling."[2] Some fireboards have notches cut out of the lowest edge to accommodate andirons.[3] Fireboards are also called: chimney boards, chimney pieces, chimney stops, fire boards, summer boards.

Among the many artists who have produced ornamental fireboards: Robert Adam; Winthrop Chandler (1747-1790);[1] Andien de Clermont;[5] Charles Codman;[1] Michele Felice Corné;[1] Edward Hicks;[6] Jean-Baptiste Oudry;[5] Rufus Porter.[1] Examples of fireboards are in numerous collections, including: Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts;[7] Historic New England; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA;[8] Peabody Essex Museum; Victoria & Albert Museum.

Images

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Stacy C. Hollander. "Fireboards and Overmantels." Encyclopedia of American folk art. Taylor & Francis, 2004
  2. ^ a b Betsy Krieg Salm. Women's painted furniture, 1790-1830: American schoolgirl art. NH: University Press of New England, 2010
  3. ^ a b Jane C. Nylander. Our own snug fireside: images of the New England home, 1760-1860. Yale University Press, 1994
  4. ^ Russell Sturgis (1901), A dictionary of architecture and building, New York: The Macmillan Company, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23233221M/A_dictionary_of_architecture_and_building 
  5. ^ a b Clare Graham. Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards. UK: Osprey Publishing, 2008
  6. ^ Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Oxford University Press, 2011
  7. ^ Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium. Collections Database. Retrieved 2011-12-17
  8. ^ National Gallery of Art (US) and Deborah Chotner. American Naive Paintings. Oxford University Press, 1992

Further reading

External links