Mantel Inspiration

When it's not fireplace weather, and when your fireplace is not a source of heat and comfort, it is still the focal point (more often than not) of the room. And your fireplace mantel is a wonderful opportunity to infuse more interest via art, color, texture, and objects into your home. There are about as many ways to style a fireplace as there are fireplaces, so let these examples inspire you to curate your own collection of blossoms, art, and fun and meaningful objects.

A mantel can be an art gallery...

...or a place to express a favorite narrative. Here we see what must be some sort of homage to vaudeville and comedians! It is quirky, off-kilter, and fascinating! Create your own narrative: mountains?...Italy?...music? Your jumping off point could be anything.

A collection of Russian nesting dolls brings color to a black and white fireplace and mantel. The smoothness of the dolls contrasts well against the spiky antlers behind! Remember Design mantra #1..."Contrast brings interest!"

A ram's head and some ethnic objects--a hammered silver plate from India, a porcelain statue of Quan-Yin--lend a sense of world travel and exotica.

Fireplace breasts are traditional spots for mirrors. But why not go BIG with an enormous convex mirror? It bounces light around and serves to visually expand the room. Groupings of blossoms and branches below bring outside in.

I can't help but think that the following tableau is composed of articles and objects that are personal treasures of whomever created it. To replicate the look, scour antique stores, flea markets, and thrift stores for interesting objects like the metal watch faces, mercury candle stick holders, and old frames we see here. Keeping things in a single or limited color family helps unify your tableau. But be sure to include different textures, and include short, medium, and tall objects for variety and visual interest.

Brass accents on this mantel look wonderful against the black and white painting and photo (of one of David's hands from the Accademia in Florence!). Go ahead and layer your art...lean pieces up against other pieces.

If you have a Mid-Century Modern ranch house, embrace the time period with a mod piece of art, some blown glass bottles in an appropriate color, and a George Nelson wall clock!

This modern art work provides a textural backdrop for an antique framed piece (again, leaning against the larger painting), and lovely turquoise and celedon vases. The look is fresh for either spring or summer.

The ornate fireplace surround here calls for something more simple and sleek. Modern prints and etchings look fantastic next to the Georgian carving of the surround.

For maximum impact, group like objects together. This collection of artisanal vases looks great in a row. A white feathered Juju hat presides over it all. Notice how the height of the vases is arranged in an inverted pyramid. The dip in the center allows the Juju hat some space.

This tableau groups together black and white objects in a pleasing way. Plaster, glass, marble, paper, metal...

This arrangement in the home of interior designer Tommy Smythe uses the pyramid principle: larger anchor objects at either end, a tall piece of art work in the middle to form the peak, and intriguing curio objects fill the spaces in between.

Don't be afraid to try large pieces on your mantel. It might feel at first as if the objects are overwhelming your fireplace, but it's probably that you're simply not used to it. Be bold.

Notice how, in nearly every example above, the arrangement takes advantage of asymmetry. Many of the sculptures, vases, or art works are positioned on one side of the mantel. Play with this idea and see what you can come up with. And remember Design Mantra #5: "Odd numbers work best!" When in doubt, use three or five objects in groupings. It will instantly lend design cred to your tableau!

Happy designing!

Catch Your Balance: Symmetry vs. Asymmetry

One of the primary elements of design is symmetry...and by extension, its opposite, asymmetry. Symmetrical rooms are most often blessed with good bones: a central focal point such as a fireplace helps to balance a room and achieve a settled, classic, sometimes grand effect. These rooms are lucky enough to feature fireplaces centered on a wall, evenly spaced between windows.

A room doesn't have to have a fireplace to have a focal point. Generally speaking, the place where your eye falls first when one enters a room is the "focal point." This can be a wall, or a set of windows, or a single large window...

Here we see a wall large enough to accommodate a king size bed which is naturally the focal point of the room. Bedrooms are easy spaces in which to create symmetry since beds most usually have two night tables, a fact which lends itself to a pleasant layout.

This next living room has a similar presentation: the largest wall is nestled between sloping ceiling planes, focusing attention to the center. This space has created symmetry in that one can practically draw a line down the center, divide the space in half and come up with nearly the same pieces on each side.

Thankfully the windows in this rustic room below are balanced, leaving a generous space for some long format art in between. The art echoes the window shapes and creates even more balance for this lovely focal point.

This living room received a focal point from Scot Meacham Wood when he created a balanced arrangement highlighting shape and placement instead of the television which reads as another piece of this tableau.

Natural symmetry in a room feels stable and established, with an almost calming quality. But what of asymmetry? Well, it depends upon your approach. Asymmetry has been used for centuries in Japanese design which values negative space almost more than objects. I wrote about this in a previous History of Furniture post here and you can see this at work in the image below.

The alcove to the right is larger and cuts the wall roughly into a two-third/one third ratio (known as The Golden Mean) but somehow the space doesn't feel out of balance. This has to do with how expertly the negative space is handled: the smaller alcove has a raised platform and a black iron bell hung high which gives it more visual bulk, balancing out the larger space next to it. It is a visual trick that anyone can utilize to make asymmetrical spaces feel equal.

Let's take a look at a room that indeed has a central fireplace for a focal point but the room is weighted in the direction of the window. In order to fix this imbalance, pieces of a darker hue--an antique portrait in black and a dark wood chest--give weight to the "blank side" of the fireplace, achieving symmetry.

But what to do when a fireplace is not centered? This is so often the case and a good approach is to trick the eye, as we have seen. Below we see two versions of achieving balance with darker pieces (an armoire in the first image and a dark lamp and table in the second).

In the bedroom below, the pair of windows on the left could wreak havoc in any other room but the sparse platform bed evokes a Japanese, Zen-like feeling by weighting the other side of the windows with more night table bulk and a horizontal piece of art, again adding weight for balance. There is symmetry even in asymmetry!

Happy designing!