Fred. W. Burgess

Fire-making appliances—Tinder boxes—The fireplace—Andirons and fire-dogs—Sussex backs—Fireirons and fenders—Trivets and stools—Bellows.

In winter the ingle side, or its equivalent in a modern house, appears to be the chief centre of attraction. It was ever so; and to-day the lessened necessity for crowding round the fire and sitting in the ingle nook, owing to modern methods of distributing the heat, in no way lessens the attraction which draws an Englishman to the fire. In the United States of America stoves of various kinds are deemed good substitutes, but in this country the open fire is preferred, and modern scientific research aims at perfecting and improving existing accepted methods of heating and warming rooms rather than of displacing them.

In the days when the earliest collectable curios of the ingle side were being made by the village smith, and the local sculptor and mason were preparing the chimney corner and the mantelpiece to surround the fireplace, it was in front of the great open fire in the kitchen, before which the large joints were roasted, that the retainers of the baron and the landowner or lord of the manor assembled on winter nights. It was around the fire which crackled on the hearth in the great hall that the more favoured ones forgathered, and in the lesser homestead the family drew up their chairs and found seats in the ingle nook, near the fire, when snow was upon the ground, and frost and cold draughts made them shiver in the houseplace.

The fireplace has its attractions still, and builders and architects have designed many cosy corners within reach of the fire. The furnishings of the hearth have become more decorative as times have become more luxurious and art has gained the ascendant; and sometimes their greater ornament has been at the sacrifice of utility, but the root principles of construction as seen in the older grates and fire appointments remain.

Fire-making Appliances.

It seems natural to inquire into the origin of the need of a fireplace, and to do so we must go back to prehistoric times and trace the discovery of fire-making apparatus, for without the means of lighting a fire it is obvious that the grate would be useless. With the fire came artificial light, the two great discoveries being perfected side by side, sometimes the one gaining ground, at others the one that had fallen behind shooting ahead as the result of some great discovery, or the application of scientific principles not deemed of utility to the one or the other as the case might be. The fire-making appliances which were in use for the purpose of lighting fires were of course used long before any scheme of artificial lighting—apart from the flames and radiance from the fire. Professor Flinders Petrie, that great investigator into the antiquities of the Ancients, tells us that fire-making by friction has been found to exist in far-off times. It would appear that the discovery of how to produce fire has been accomplished independently by men living under very different conditions and at all ages. The fire-making of the Ancients has been rediscovered by primitive people in more recent days, although it is probable that native races who until recently have been living apart from the great world outside have moved slowly in their march of civilization, and have been using the same methods as those first tried by their ancestors ages ago. In the unrivalled collection of appliances got together by Professor Petrie, there are fire drills from the Transvaal, bow drills used by the Esquimaux, and fire ploughs from North Queensland. Lighting fires must have been a slow and difficult task in the days when tinder boxes were in request, for when Curfew rang and the couvre de feu had done its work there was no fire in which to thrust the torch, and the entire process had to be gone over again when the fire had once more to be kindled.

Tinder Boxes.

The tinder box, formerly a real necessary, was to be found in every house, and in many instances, in the days before lucifer matches, it was a desirable pocket companion. Tinder boxes were made of different materials; some were of wood, others of iron or brass. They lent themselves to ornamentation: thus some were engraved and quite artistic; many of the more recent ones were made of tin, and on the covers were decorative little scenes. The contents of the tinder boxes were of course flint and steel and tinder (something very inflammable, such as scorched linen), with a damper for extinguishing the smouldering fire after a light had been obtained, or in later days by the sulphur-tipped match applied to it. Among the varieties are what are termed pistol tinder boxes, instruments which contained a small charge of gunpowder, which, when fired, lighted the tinder. Tinder pouches or purses containing flint and tinder having a piece of steel riveted on to the edge of the purse or pouch were a common form. Those brought over from Central Asia were frequently decorated with dragons and the swastika symbol, in damascened work.

Many inventions were put forward by chemists before the perfecting of the common match, the wax vesta, and the fusee. One of these was Berry's apparatus, which he devised in the beginning of the nineteenth century, calling it a "contrivance for lighting lamps in the dark." It consisted of an acid bottle with a string by which a conical stopper could be raised, and a chlorate match held against the stopper became ignited.

Match boxes are collectable, and collectors of fire-making and lighting contrivances often include a few old matches. The lucifer match consisted of sticks tipped with potassium chlorate and sugar, held together with gum, igniting when touched with concentrated sulphuric acid. They were invented in 1805, and by the year 1820 had quite taken the place of tinder boxes. Various lighting pastes were used, until the improvements which resulted in the "safety" matches. The dangerous sulphur and white phosphorus have given place in modern match-making to sesqui-sulphate mixtures; and wax vestas and other "strikers" have superseded the curious objects the collector meets with.

The Fireplace.

In studying the curios of the fireplace, it is scarcely necessary to go back beyond the grates and fire appointments which may be seen in the old houses standing to-day. Even during the last generation or two there have been many changes, and in rebuilding and refurnishing the antiquities of the fireplace have in many instances been swept away. During more recent days, however, there has been a greater appreciation of the curio value of mantelpieces and old grates, and it is no uncommon thing for hundreds and even thousands of pounds to be paid for rare specimens.

In some instances the fireplace may truly be said to have been the central attraction, for the old grates and mantelpieces have often realized as much as the whole of the remainder of the materials secured when an old house has been pulled down. Some of these mantelpieces of olden time were magnificent memorials of the sculptor's and the carver's art. They included overmantels, the entire breastwork of the chimney often being covered with stone or marble or black oak, right up to the ceiling or the cornice.

The open hearth was the earlier form of fireplace, and long before chimneys were built logs of wood burned on it, and in still earlier times in a basket or brazier, the smoke finding its way to the roof, the rafters of which soon became blackened. Chimneys, however, are of early date, and the household curios of the fireplace have almost entirely been used under such conditions of fuel consumption, the up-draught of the chimney carrying away the smoke and harmful gases. The firebacks and the andirons, and later the fire-dogs, of the open fireplaces are collectable curios of considerable interest, and the hobby may be indulged in at a moderate cost. The collection of mantelpieces may be left to the wealthy and to those who have baronial halls in which to refix them. Fig. 1 represents an old fireplace in a panelled oak room with a Tudor ceiling. There is a Sussex back of rather small size, and a pair of andirons, on which a log of wood is shown reposing. An old saucepan has been reared up in the corner, and there is a trivet on the hearth. There is a very remarkable group of cresset dogs shown in Fig. 2. One pair of dogs or andirons has ratchets on which supplementary bars were placed. These show an early advance from the simple andiron, and point to the later developments of the fire-grate with the fast bars which were to come. In the same group two rush-holders or candlesticks are shown, one with a ratchet, the other adjusted on a simple rod, the socket being held in place by a spring (see Figs. 4 and 5).

As time went on and change of fuel came about, the forests of England being gradually consumed on the domestic hearth, coal was substituted for the fast-vanishing wood. Then it was that a change was needed, and instead of the open fireplace and the andirons on which the logs of wood had formerly been laid, iron baskets or grates in which coal could be placed were made, so that the scattering of fuel and cinders on the open hearth could be prevented. Sussex backs gave place in time to the grate in which a metal back was frequently incorporated, flanked by the dogs in front. Then came the closed-in grates and the hob-registers of the eighteenth century, many being designed after the beautiful ornamentation produced by the Adam Brothers; also the decorative metal work enriched with ormolu and brass, which in due course again gave way to the plain and oftentimes ugly register grates of the Victorian Age, which in more modern times have been displaced by the reproductions of the antique, and by well-grates and scientifically constructed stoves and heating radiators by which heat can be conserved, the draught of the fire and the chimney regulated, and the coal burned more economically on slow-combustion and semi-slow-combustion principles. Science has taught builders and others how to radiate the heat, and prevent that waste which formerly went up the chimney, so that the necessity to sit round the fire is not as great as it once was, and rooms large and small are more evenly heated. The fireplace has once more become a thing of beauty, and all its appointments are rendered harmonious with the furnishings of the home, whether they are modern replicas of the homesteads of earlier periods or constructed according to the newer art of the present day.

Andirons and Fire-dogs.

The brazier on a piece of stone in the centre of the room served well when charcoal was plentiful, and although the smoke ascended amidst the rafters the heat spread and there was plenty of room for many persons to assemble "around" the fire. With chimneys built at the side of the house for convenience, the timber was laid upon the hearth flag. Under the conditions that appertained when great open chimneys allowed the rain and snow to fall upon the fire or on the logs laid ready for the burning, the difficulties of lighting a fire were experienced. Then the local smith came to the aid of the "domestic" or serf, and hammered into shape what were termed andirons, their use making it easier to light the logs, giving a current of air under them, causing them to burn brighter. The andirons were afterwards called fire-dogs, and in course of time bars rested on hooks or ratchets, or were laid across the dogs.

There are no records of the earliest inventors of andirons or dogs. It is quite clear that small fire-dogs were in use in Rome at an early period; the one illustrated in Fig. 6, measuring 6¾ in. in height, of artistic form, two draped figures being the supports of the arch, is in the National Museum in Naples, where there are many other beautiful examples of early Roman metal work. In the seventeenth century some of the more elaborate ornamental cast brass fire-dogs were enriched with black and white or blue and white enamel, several varieties of fireside ornaments being decorated in the same way.

Enamel thus applied to metal is exceptionally valuable, as much as two hundred guineas being paid for an enamelled pair of fire-dogs. It is the ordinary forms of cast or wrought dogs with which collectors are mostly familiar, especially those made in the famous Sussex ironfields, such as those shown in Figs. 8, 9, and 10, which are of early date, the pair illustrated in Fig. 9 being dated 1625, the others probably contemporary. Single examples of similar designs are shown in Fig. 8. The need of the metal furnishings of the hearth—as the chimney places of the smaller manor houses and the dwellings of the traders were being erected—caused an impetus to the trade of the ironfounder and smith, and the founders and smiths of the Sussex villages came to the aid of the builder. There are dated examples from the sixteenth century onwards, recording the periods when these interesting souvenirs of domestic building and the great Sussex ironfields—now deserted—were in operation.

Sussex Backs.

There is a peculiar attraction about the castings made in Sussex in the days when the foundries of that county were in full work, and many villages were filled with busy pattern-makers, moulders, and founders carrying on a thriving industry in districts which have now been given up to the plough; for the Sussex ironfields have been abandoned, as when the timber of the district was consumed it was impossible to work the forges economically, for coal was far distant and transport costs prohibitive. The old grate backs for which the Sussex foundries were famous in the seventeenth century were often modelled on Dutch designs, and some showed German characteristics. There are many noted English designs, too, mostly taking the forms of coats of arms and the shields and crests of the landlords for whom the stove-plates were made, some becoming "stock" patterns and often duplicated. There is quite a fine collection of these grate backs in several museums, and some good examples can still be bought from dealers whose agents secure them from time to time when property is being rebuilt. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a long oblong plate on which is cast the arms of Browne of Brenchley, in Kent, probably made in the second half of the seventeenth century. There are others with cherubs and curious supporters of shields of arms. A still earlier piece, probably cast about the year 1600, is an oblong Sussex back deeply recessed, on which is the arms of John Blount, Earl of Devonshire, another bearing the Royal arms of the Tudor period. In Hampton Court Palace there are some especially fine grate backs, mostly bearing the Royal arms. At a little earlier period the cast grate backs were chiefly plain with isolated crests or designs scattered over the surface, often quite irregularly.

The three fine examples of Sussex backs illustrated are typical of popular styles. Fig. 11 shows the Royal lion of England, accompanied by the emblems appearing on the Royal arms in the seventeenth century; the Tudor rose crowned, the Scottish thistle, and the French fleur-de-lis indicative of the throne of France to which English sovereigns then laid some claim. The date of this fine back is 1649. Fig. 7 is of an earlier period, being dated 1588, beneath which are the initials "I.F.C." There are also roses and fleurs-de-lis, as well as anchors and other emblems. The back shown in Fig. 12 has for its design the Royal arms surrounded by the Garter, and the initials "C.R.," a design which was duplicated very extensively soon after the Restoration. It will be noticed that the Royal arms formed the design of the Sussex back shown in position in Fig. 1. Some of the German and Dutch designs are very curious, many of them representing scriptural subjects, like Moses and the brazen serpent; the death of Absalom; the temptation of Joseph; and the often-repeated story of the Garden of Eden.

In the American museums there are some very interesting examples of foundry work; some of the cast backs, evidently modelled on German or Dutch designs, take the form of stove-plates, including both front and side plates, mostly bearing dates in the middle of the eighteenth century. Pennsylvania was the chief district in which these plates were made, some being cast by William Siegel, who went to America from Germany in 1758, and erected what was known as the Berkshire furnace. A curious early stove-plate in an American collection, dated 1736, has upon it a scene known as "the dance after the wedding." It is said to have been used in the front of what was known as the German wall-warming stove.

In form the Sussex shape is usually rectangular—that is, wider than its height. It would appear as if the back was at first moulded from a wooden plate, the crest, initials, or design being then impressed by movable moulds or stamps, generally of wood. These were irregularly placed, consequently crowns, roses, crosses, family badges, and all kinds of emblems were dotted promiscuously over the plate. Some of the plain plates with cable-twist borders were probably used as hearthstones and not as backs. The styles which were gradually developed were chiefly on the same lines as those which became popular in France. Their use lingered long in that country for until recently in many an old family mansion might have been seen a plaque de cheminÉe, on which was the coat of arms and supporters of the original owner of the chÂteau, and sometimes of the kings of France. The Sussex ironfounders worked chiefly at Cowden, Hawkhurst, and Lamberhurst, and there were forges at Cranbrook, Coudhurst, Tonbridge, and Biddenden. The principal ironmasters of Kent were the Knights and the Tichbornes, whose descendants became baronets.

Fireirons and Fenders.

Fire brasses or fireirons came into vogue with grates, although the sets now regarded as old fire brasses, some of which are very elaborate and massive, made at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were first used when fenders came into vogue; instead of being reared up alongside the fire-dogs in the chimney corner they rested on the fenders. There is not much to distinguish the variations in fireirons except the obvious indications of older workmanship and design, when contrasted with modern "irons." The shovel pans gave the artist in metal some opportunity for showing his skill in design and perforated work. It is probable that the earliest form of shovel was that known as the "slide," its use being to shovel up the ashes of a wood fire, an operation necessary more frequently then than in modern days when coal has been the principal fuel consumed. Some of the older specimens are dated, and bear the owner's initials; thus one authentic specimen from Shopnoller, in the Quantock Hills, is engraved, "I T. 1784." Many of the Dutch metal workers produced very beautiful and decorative stands on which miniature sets of rich brasses were hung; some of the old English fireside stands were arranged as receptacles for tongs, shovel, and brush, and now and then the baluster stem supported by a tripod base had a central attachment from which a toddy kettle could be slung. The brass toddy kettle formerly stood upon the hob of the grate, singing merrily, always ready for the cup of tea which "cheers but not inebriates," or, as was frequently the case, for the preparation of hot toddy or spirit.

The evolution of the fender forms a pleasing story in connection with the ingle side. Perhaps the earlier form likely to interest collectors of household curios is that made of perforated brass, often some 8 in. or 10 in. in depth. These fenders standing on claw feet were afterwards fitted with bottom plates of iron, on which was a ridge or rest against which the fire brasses were prevented from slipping. Then came iron or steel scroll-shaped fenders, tapering down from a few inches in height at the ends to centres almost level with the ground. To obviate the inconvenience of there being no resting-place for the fireirons loose supports were fitted into sockets at the ends, and these afterwards were cast as part of the scroll. Then came the stiff and formal early Victorian metal work—iron fenders with steel tops relieved occasionally by ormolu ornament. These in their turn gave way to fender kerbs of metal, stone, marble, or tiles, and loose ornamented fire-dogs which have in more recent times served as rests for the fire brasses.

Trivets and Stools.

Combination appliances were early adopted, although we are apt at times to associate combined utensils with modern innovations. The old English trivet of wrought iron made in the eighteenth century was frequently "improved" by the addition of a toasting fork, which could be adjusted and set at certain angles so that the toast could be left in front of the fire for a few moments until it was quite ready to be taken off and put on a plate standing conveniently on the trivet until the dish or rack of toast was complete. (Some scarce trivets are illustrated in "Chats on Old Copper and Brass.")

Bellows.

The Germans were noted for the manufacture of decorative bellows cut and carved in quaint designs, some of the finest examples being made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Others were made in Holland, some of the Dutch bellows being inlaid with mother-o'-pearl. There are also examples of old English carving, the style of the ornament taking the form of the designs on contemporary oak furniture. Some of the largest and handsomest bellows of English make are of late seventeenth-century workmanship. The example illustrated in Fig. 13 is a magnificent specimen, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington.