Fireboard

A fireboard or chimney board is a 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 Cornè;[1] Edward Hicks;[6] Jean-Baptiste Oudry;[5] Rufus Porter.[1] Examples of decorated 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
  • Fireboard with view of Chatsworth, Derbyshire, England, by M.F. Corné
  • Fireboard decorated with trompe-l'oeil image of a fireplace and mantel, ca.1825 (Historic New England)
  • Cat and Canary fireboard, France, ca.1830-1840 (Cooper Hewitt Museum)
  • Great Gale of 1846 fireboard (Peabody Essex Museum)
  • Fireboard by Grandma Moses, 1918
  • Banister House, Brookfield, Massachusetts, USA (photo 1936) (Library of Congress)
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gollark: They can move somewhere else, however.
gollark: It can't be arbitrarily low. I'm pretty sure those people are the majority of the population.
gollark: But then you would put the graph-sketchers out of business.
gollark: With some maths I can't really do you could even probably configure things so that these all provide the same amount of total tax income.

References
  1. Stacy C. Hollander (2004). "Fireboards and Overmantels". Encyclopedia of American Folk Art. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415929868.
  2. Betsy Krieg Salm (2010). Women's Painted Furniture, 1790-1830: American Schoolgirl Art. NH: University Press of New England. ISBN 9781584658450.
  3. Jane C. Nylander (1994). Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780394549842.
  4. Russell Sturgis (1901), A Dictionary of Architecture and Building, New York: Macmillan Company, OL 23233221M
  5. Clare Graham (2008). Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards. UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9780852639214.
  6. Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Oxford University Press. 2011. ISBN 9780199739264.
  7. "Collections Database". Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium. Retrieved 2011-12-17.
  8. National Gallery of Art (US); Deborah Chotner (1992). American Naive Paintings. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780894681738.

Further reading
  • "Ornamental Chimney Boards". Cassell's Household Guide. 2. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin. 1877.
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