Masonry Magazine October 2007 Page. 21
Photos courtesy of Walter Amold
Walter S. Arnold, a stone carver and sculptor in Elgin, III., creates custom mantelpieces in any style, including classical, Tudor, Baroque, and contemporary, from natural stone or marble.
"There has been an interest in mantels for many hundreds of years," Arnold says. "It's typical for them to go in the most important room in the house."
Arnold, who has been carving since 1985, after studying in Italy and working on the National Cathedral in Washington, spends anywhere from a few days to more than one year carving each mantel. Prices vary greatly, generally starting at $5,000 to $6,000.
"If you look at what people are spending money on nowadays, things that will go out of fashion in a year, the price of a hand-carved fireplace is not that out-of-line at all," Arnold says, adding that hand-carved mantels are not so much a trend as traditional products. "It's coming back to what has traditionally been important. Rather than a trend, it's a return to long-standing taste and values."
Olivier Dumont, a French-trained artist and co-owner of Atelier Jouvence Custom Stone Works in Chicago, says he's experiencing a growing demand for his hand-carved limestone fireplace mantels.
"There is an increasing demand for it, as people see it as an option, Dumont says. "They're really quite functional works of art."
Some mantel designs have a lot of fancy, ornate detail, but the current trend is toward straight, clean lines. "It may have to do with people wanting the fireplace to look beautiful, not to be the focal point, but to look beautiful with everything else in the room," he says.
Having a foreign-trained carver produce mantels in the Unites States allows customers to get a European designed piece without having to hassle with language barriers and shipping overseas.
"People think they need to buy from a company in Europe if they want a French mantel," Dumont says. "But they're made here from a French carver trained in France who knows the style. All of our carving is done in the United States. You don't need to deal with communication problems overseas."
Fireplace mantel installation
SINCE MANTELS can easily weigh 500 to 1,500 pounds, architects and masons have to consider the weight load when designing and installing the pieces. The precision-cut mantelpieces have small tolerances, sometimes as tight as 1/16 of an inch, but they're installed the same as other masonry materials.
"Fireplaces can be a 3-D jigsaw puzzle," Arnold says. "People have to think in 3-D to align everything, because it is cut very accurately. If something doesn't line up, don't force it. Call the carver."
Dumont sells about 70 percent of his mantels in the Chicago area and works with local masons who are familiar with the installation. "You need someone who's careful and meticulous," he says. "A good stone mason shouldn't have any trouble with installation. It is a standard masonry installation."
The same goes for fireplace mantel replicas that are made from molds, says Jerry Campbell, sales manager for Old World Stoneworks in Dallas. "There's nothing unique about the installation," he says.
Campbell adds that although the cast stone requires just one to two days for production, it needs another 21 days to cure. The mantels then become two to three-times stronger than concrete.
"Some of these pieces are huge," he says. "They're proportioned to fit the size of the room. [The mantels] have a top-class look. They're the focal point of the whole house, and people gather around them."