Andirons: From Status Symbols to Style Markers
To James Gallagher, an antiques dealer in North Norwich, New York, a fireplace sans andirons looks naked. “Without them it appears to be a black hole,” he says. Gallagher’s view is understandable, as he’s been selling museum-quality fireplace fixtures through his business, Antique Andirons, for nearly 40 years. Look at these images and you may warm up to his way of thinking.
According to Gallagher, the earliest andirons — metal supports that hold burning wood in a fireplace — were simple affairs. “In early America people would go down to the blacksmith and ask him to bang out something to hold the wood,” he says. “But as the country’s wealth grew during colonial and federal times, they became grander.”
That grandeur is on display in a room designed by S.B. Long Interiors for the Governor’s Mansion in Connecticut.
New independence and wealth had Americans dressing their homes with brass andirons, and brass foundries in New York, Boston and especially Philadelphia turned out elaborate pieces. “They were a room’s focal point and a status symbol for any household,” says Gallagher. “Remember, these were homes without electricity or central heat. There would have been a fireplace in nearly every room, and it was designed to radiate heat. The glow of the flames were amplified on the brass of the andirons.”
Status symbol aside, andirons have a practical role. By elevating wood, they create a draft that allows fires to start more quickly and burn better. Most andirons have the same basic components: a billet bar (the supports the firewood rests upon), log stops (small brackets on the billet bar that hold the wood in check) and decorative posts in front (usually made up of legs, a plinth and a finial). Gallagher says early fireplaces had deep hearths and no screens, so andirons kept burning logs securely in the fireplace.
The black shade of the andirons in this project, by Roma | Eco-Sustainable Building Technologies, eliminates the need to polish the andirons, a daily task in early America that was probably the bane of a servant’s existence.
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Andirons: From Status Symbols to Style Markers
