Home is where the heart(h) is: 5a. Firedogs or andirons?

Hello my friends,

This is already  the fifth episode in a little series of posts concerning fireplaces. :-)

An empty fireplace looks bare and uninviting. And in the period Huis ter Swinnendael will be set in, it was still the main source of heat in a room. Besides the kitchens there will be no lit fires because the scene is set in the summertime. But it is only natural that the fireplaces that go into the house should be furnished for that task as soon as summer ends and the evenings get real chilly.

A while back I made two posts on firebacks and one on curfews that I made for some of the fireplaces that wil go into the house. I also shared with you a post on the first, but not the last, dummy board that could be placed into an empty fireplace in the summertime when heating was not required.

Because the house is supposed to be around 150 years old by the time it is 1806, I have, as with so many other features of the house, the luxury of different styles and periods to play with. Today I want to show you a few decorative examples of firedogs or andirons that I will use. The main use of firedogs is to keep the firewood off the ground so the air can circulate, and at the same time keep the burning logs inside the fireplace. 

In kitchens they could have added hooks to carry spits for roasting meat and even cresset cups to hold fat to baste the meat with. In the more formal rooms, especially in the renaissance and onwards, they could be highly decorative objects. These irons could be adorned with brass, silver or even gold for the grandest of rooms. From simple forms into elaborate items with little vases and statues that followed the changes in fashion and taste of each period.

The first pair I want to show you is large and will most likely go into the fireplace of the Great Hall. The decoratieve base is made out of card stock adorned with the mask of a "Green Man". The curly foliage around his face is not as leafy as many other green men but stil it is one. A Green Man is to some people a spirit associated with forests and trees. Perhaps it is not nice of me to use it on andirons holdings logs to burn to ashes... 

Oh well. You may know that the oldest depictions are found in Roman temples dating from the 2nd century AD. And it has never really left us since then. wether it had a spiritual meaning or was merely used as an ornament. Through the ages it can be found in churches (corbels), classical gardens (fountainheads) or in interiors. 

But back to my Andirons, I cut the horizontal supports from a scrap of mahogany. And filed the edges to give it more the look of wrought iron.

 

The top is made by arranging and glueing a few beads on a toothpick. The top two beads are repeated at the end of the horizontal rest to prevent logs from falling of. The 'melon'shaped bead works quite well to add some interest to it. This is a design populair in Holland and England from the early baroque during the reign of Charles II and through the reign of William & Mary. 

In the picture above you see them painted in gun metal gray paint. They will not stay this way. The horizontal bars and the beads at the back end will be painted black to imitate blackened iron. decorative fronts will be covered in silver leaf metal. Some of the grand andirons in this period were made of silver, and in this case I think it will look way better than gold. 

But, I do not have leaf silver as yet. So these will be finished in the coming weeks as soon as I have bought a booklet of silver leaf metal.

Not all Andirons can and should be so big as the previous ones. The size should be in proportion to the size of the fireplace where they will end up. The firedogs in this picture are made using stampings I bought from Elisabeth Elsner von Gronow through her website. She has a great collection of stampings. This lad and lady could fit in either a Baroque or a Rococo interior. For these I have a Rococo interior in mind.

I like to use stampings like these because of their sharp details, just as with my miniature firebacks, these stampings can be very crisp and fine, and higly detailed. These two mythological creatures are extremely good examples of that. 

I used cheap mass produced andirons, bought in a store instead of building up the back section from wood. These are cast in a soft metal alloy. I snipped off their tops because they would be partly visible if I left them on. Next I filed down extruding parts on the the fronts of the snipped andions in order to glue the stampings onto them more easily.

The creatures in question are tritons or a similar tuype of creatures living in the waters serving some rivergod or seagod, spending their days splashing around in the water and blowing on their shell- horns et cetera. Such fun! 

Perhaps water creatures seem a weird theme for a fireplace but when you look at antique examples you will find that almost every theme goes. Even fishes as you will see below.

These tritons are very baroque with there fish tails for legs and a handfull of reeds. Strangely enough the male triton is made of brass while the female triton is made of copper. That is not a big deal however because they will be gilded with gold leaf metal anyway. If you look closely you can see that they are not the mirror image of each other. As I said, one is male while the other is female. And their legs/tails are draped and curled the other way around. 

As soon as I saw them I wanted to make firedogs out of them. because they are 2,5 cm tall I thought they would be perfect for the rococo fireplace of Alison Davies I marbled in a workshop of Simone Kasbergen in Arnhem. The fireplace itself is quite large but the opening is somewhat small because of the insert. 

The different metals used for the male and female triton are not the only thing that sets them apart from eachother. Oddly enough one stamping was cast solid the other was stamped and thus hollow. But that posed no problem for me. I filled the hollow one up with fimo clay, baked it in the oven and painted the backs black. 

When all had cooled down and hardened, I glued the metal support onto the tritons. When the glue had dried I gilded them using gold leaf metal. In the picture above they stil needed some cleaning and the removal of little loose ends. I did that after taking this picture and now this pair of firedogs is finished. I really like how they turned out!  And here I used stampings, but every suitable decoration in plastic or resin or wood will do just as well.  

But why stop there? And why 'steer' away from the nautical theme? I saw firedogs with classical dolphins in an antique shop a while ago. So when I found these stampings of stylised  classical dolphins somewhere on Etsy, I wanted to use them to make firedogs out of them. I glued them onto thin card stock which I let stick out at the bottom. This leaves room for the base to be glued on. 

The base is made from scraps of moulding of which I have cut away the lower half. After the glue had dried, additional wooden parts were added for the horizontal rest for the firewood. The excess card was now cut off flush with the wooden moulding. 

The raised ends on the back consist of a little turned wooden spool and the head of a dress pin. The excess of the pin sticking out of the spool is cut off. For it would only split the wood of the horizontal rests.

Like the 1:1 set I saw these will just be painted black to resemble wrought iron. The heads of these dolphins are bigger compared to the antique ones I saw. They were slimmer, but I still like the result very much.  Three coats of black enamel paint gave them the final look. Perhaps I want to dull down the sheen on them but other than that I would not change a thing. 

To compare the height I put them next to the Andirons of the fireplace of the Hall.(those are 6 centimeter in height) I am not sure where to put these yet. But I will find the right room for these. 

The last one I want to show you all is not really a firedog but rather a fender. What is the difference? Both help to keep the burning logs inside the fireplace. But the fender does not raise the fire from the hearth floor like andirons do. 

Fenders are usualy in the form of a railing of some sorts. This one is made of a stamping depicting a classical ballustrade with an urn with flowers on both ends. This will fit in a more classicist room like the Louis XVI style diningroom that I have planned. 

This fender is another brass stamping I bought from Elsner von Gronow. I filled the hollow back of the stamping up with fimoclay and baked it in the oven like I did with the previous ones. It was a little fiddly to remove all the excess fimo between the ballusters, but I got there in the end. A craft knife, a tooth brush and some patience was all I needed!

Before painting the back and the bottom rail at the front black I baked the fimo in the oven. Here I did not have to make supports to let it stand upright. Just a small slab of fimo at the bottom provided a stable base preventing the fender to fall forward constantly. 

After that was finished I painted the bottom and the back with (my trusted) black enamel paint. My favorite go to for wrought iron fireplace accesories. :-) 

The front and the sides of the balustrade were gilded. Unfortunately I damaged the gilding afterwards but only noticed that after taking the picture below. So that will have to be repaired soon. But I like the result so far.

The types and shapes of Andirons through the ages are numerous. These shown here are not my last projects. I have plans and materials for at least two more types of andirons to make. Different styles and shapes from the ones in this post. However, that will be for a future post. Since I have already started on them but I have not yet enough progress made on them to show you.  So that will be for episode 5b. :-)

Apart from posts on dummyboards, fire backs, and curfews, I also showed you the making of the two tableaux you see in the picture below. I received them last week. They have been fired for the last time now and are finished! They will go up against the wall of the fireplace soon!

Stay well!

Huibrecht.