Chimney-Piece Fieldwork
All of the core themes of the STONE-WORK project converge on the little studied topic of chimneypiece production in the eighteenth century, which entails design, material procurement and execution, consumption and representation. This is the subject of the project’s PhD dissertation, being undertaken by Mary Nevin. Falling between the disciplines of architectural and sculpture history, the chimneypiece has been considered as too quotidian by art historians and too decorative or pictorial by architectural historians, while its material dimensions have been largely undocumented.
Members of the STONE-WORK team: Dr Ruth Siddall, Prof. Patrick Wyse Jackson, Dr Andrew Tierney, Prof. Christine Casey, Dr Melanie Hayes & Mary Nevin.
The cross-disciplinary character of STONE-WORK provides the multi-faceted lens required to explore this complex topic. On April 1st, the team visited a series of buildings in Dublin to study a range of chimneypiece types, both bespoke and commercially produced.
Portland stone chimneypiece, Dining Hall, TCD, c.1765. Digital render by Andrew Tierney.
One example is the remarkable carved ornament of the Dining Hall chimneypiece provided by George Darley’s workshop in the early 1760s. The surviving bill shows the ‘Ionic Portland stone Chimney Piece [sic]’ cost £55 15s. 8d., including £7 10s for carving ‘a Large Festoon and 2 Flower potts’, £2 10s for ‘2 Ionic 3 quarter Capitals’, £6 18s for ‘69 flowers and modillions’ and £8 for a 5 inch thick ‘Carlow marble tombstone laid as a hearth Stone’.[1]
Digital renders capture the skill of this high relief carving, and the sleight of hand in combining the component parts – plinths, jambs, architrave frame, Ionic half-columns and entablature, and the spectacular carved tablet and frieze – into an (almost) seamless whole.
Portland stone chimneypiece, Dining Hall, TCD, c.1765. Digital renders by Andrew Tierney.
Portland stone chimneypiece, Dining Hall, TCD, c.1765.
Geologists Dr Ruth Siddall and Prof. Patrick Wyse Jackson identified the limestones and marbles employed and, in some instances, the specific quarries and beds exploited to produced desired effects. These examples included the 'half-moon' brachiopod-rich bed of the Kilkenny limestone, the Base Bed and Whitbed facies of Portland Stone, and the brecciated and foliated yellow marble from Montarrenti near Siena with its distinctive texture, which was so prized by wealthy clients in the period.
Detail of 'Half-Moon' Kilkenny Black Marble, containing brachiopod shells and corals. This was quarried from the Black Quarry just south of Kilkenny city.
This Kilkenny marble lithology is frequently used for chimneypieces as is the fossil-free variety. Technically this is not a true metamorphic marble but is a limestone that can take a high polish.
Detail of Siena marble, or Brocatello di Siena, a brecciated and foliated variety showing angular fragments of yellow marble surrounded by a dark purple matrix.
Siena marble has a distinctive but variable texture, ranging from predominantly homogeneous, yellow-coloured marbles (the colour is imparted by yellow iron oxide hydroxide minerals) with dark purple, manganese oxide-rich veins, to highly brecciated varieties where angular fragments of yellow marble are surrounded by a dark purple matrix. These latter varieties are often called Brocatello di Siena. The stone was quarried at Montarrenti close to the village of Sovicille near Siena, Tuscany, on land owned by the Convent of Montarrenti and the stone is therefore sometimes referred to as Convent Marble.
Assembling a history of chimneypiece production in the period aims to demonstrate the interdependence of quarrying, trade, masonry, architecture and social representation in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland.
[1] TCD MUN P/2/140, fol. 19, George Darley, bill for hewn stonework in the ‘New Hall’, 1760s, cited in McParland, Edward. ‘TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN-II.’ Country Life (Archive: 1901 - 2005), May 13, 1976, 1244.