When artist Cathy Azria first began to twist steel loops and rods together, her intended home for these sculptures surprised many: she put them in the fire. This was not to temper the metal further but to turn what has been the focal point of the home for centuries, the fireplace, into something whose mesmeric powers would be intensified even further. Designed for the flames to lick and creep through their nooks and crannies, her “fire sculptures” even begin to glow as they conduct the heat.
“Even just a decade ago fireplaces were removed or bricked up and heating generally was hidden away,” says Azria, whose number of commissions has doubled over the past year. “Or a fireplace was a space that we didn’t quite know what to do with – so we put pots of dried flowers in them. Now we’re seeing them as statements again.”
What Azria’s hectic workload reflects is not only how instinctively drawn we are to the movement and heat of flames – their comfort and their danger – but how that instinct has been somewhat repressed by style over recent decades. For architects of the 1970s and 1980s the fireplace came to be totemic of traditionalism, suggestive of dusty, fusty, cluttered Victoriana, and at odds with the sparse decor of minimalism, in which household heating was far too functional not to be tidied away.
“Fireplaces were like lipstick on a gorilla – unnecessary, a conventional appliance that didn’t suit the modern, urban home,” says Henry Harrison, a former architect and founder of The Platonic Fireplace Company. “But that’s changing.” Asked to commit the heresy of installing a fireplace in a client’s home, he saw the firelight and realised not only that nothing had effectively replaced the fire as the most humanistic, most satisfying centrepiece for the domestic setting but that, with the right contemporary design, it actually made a statement other decorative flourishes rarely could. Others agree: an estimated 50 per cent of all fireplace sales are now contemporary. “And, more than that,” he adds, “they are now perceived less as a luxury and more as a necessity by homeowners – and increasingly in the commercial world too, in bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies.”
Sales of fireplaces inevitably peak in the run-up to winter but interest in them has also been boosted by the recession, both because property prices are encouraging more homeowners to upgrade rather than move and because they are going out less and cosying up more. Some are willing to invest in a fixture that will increase their home’s value by an estimated 5 per cent and, as a byproduct, keep them toasty.
But, more than this, what is driving demand is the sheer range of impressive fireplaces available: “goal post” gas-fired styles, the sleek “hole in the wall”, the “extraction system as industrial modern art” look, and the popular, super-simple “line of flame”. Then there are curvy, wood-burning models that hang from the ceiling like landing UFOs or grow out of the floor like titanium toadstools. Styles linear or organic are hot now, such that the function of the fireplace has for some come to be secondary to its looks. Small wonder, then, that it was a sculptor, Dominique Imbert, who launched fireplacemaker Focus Creation. His first hearth and surround was designed to heat his studio but his company has since completed projects such as outfitting the headquarters of architect Norman Foster, a man not known for his love of the olde worlde. Indeed, this year Focus’s Gyrofocus model – just over 40 years old now – was nominated for the German Design Council award and won first place in Italy’s Pulchra competition. The Gyrofocus was selected from 721 items as, with Italian hyperbole, “the most beautiful object in the world”.
“Fireplaces used to be made as though they came from the Middle Ages – they were faux in that way, even while interior decoration around them was becoming more contemporary,” says Imbert. “People laughed at my designs when they were first launched. They were simply too different from the received concept of what a fireplace should be. Now that is more the norm and the difference is what is driving interest and encouraging people to buy.”
While building homes without chimneys might at first seem to prohibit a fireplace, Harrison reports that the desire for the homeliness that a fire brings is such that among his clients he is seeing an increased readiness to take on the technically complex and expensive process of having a chimney built, “even though doing so can cost the same as putting in a heating system for an entire house”.
Technology, however, has helped put fireplaces where they would not otherwise be easily situated, too – in effect, wherever a gas supply can be connected. Flueless systems have broadened the possibilities for homeowners, not least because of their efficiency. Generally, flueless fires offer 90 per cent or higher thermal efficiency – 5kwt of every 7kwt of heat from a conventional fire goes straight up a chimney – and are cheaper to run, at about 7p per hour compared with 25p for a conventional fire.
Indeed, efficiency is increasingly a draw for those with green leanings. While gel fires have been largely discredited as little more than expensive ornamentation, ethanol fires are on the rise, since a chemical property of the fuel sees most of the energy transformed into heat with zero carbon emissions. “On top of that the flame itself is very attractive,” suggests Jean-Charles Cheung, managing director of EcoSmart, manufacturer of fires that run on ethanol produced from domestically grown sugar beet. To offset the impact of packaging and transport, the company plants two trees per customer. The next step, Cheung predicts, will be fuel derived from seaweed – it takes up no land, which might be better used by agriculture, nor does it put any pressure on water supplies.
But he is honest in his assessment, suggesting that an environmental concern in fireplace selection is a new criteria, if one of growing importance, and secondary to matters of style and convenience. As Munro notes: “The guy who has a certain upscale lifestyle and might want to make a fire part of his decor isn’t the type who wants to come in on a Saturday and spend an hour trying to get a fire going.” Yet, for all that levels of CO2 emissions might prey on some conscientious minds, fears of escalating gas prices or restricted supply are now even provoking renewed interest in solid fuel fires or, alternatively, stoves, according to Max Davies, director of London Fire Designs.
Since a considerable part of his business is the supply of bespoke fireplaces – created from scratch or commissioned to replace period fittings that have been damaged – Davies is not unused to dealing with wealthy clients. “Many British cities comprise mostly old housing stock and so have chimneys, and often it’s a priority for a new homeowner to fill an empty fireplace with a fire or to put in one they like,” he says. “A fire is transformative to a home. We’re even finding that some customers want them purely for decorative purposes, so they’re even more concerned that a fire looks good even when it’s off. In fact, the pieces they buy often don’t even work – but they still make a difference to a room.”
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