Whenever you see an antique stove — a Franklin or a base burner, or a parlor cooker, or a round top oak stove, and so on — you might not see the range of discussion that went into these ancient appliances, largely popular from the 19th Century to the early years of the 20th Century. You might not guess a great deal of fuss went into these stoves and their various ornamentations, made out of everything from brass, nickel, or 24K gold plating. In 1881, in the early days of the Old West, in fact the same year as the Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, back in the Michigan, people were arguing over the artistic value inherent in stove construction at the National Association of Stove Manufacturers in Detroit.
In that meeting, an artist, John R. Chapin, argued against ornamenting these stoves based on principles of art. Here’s some of why he argued that nickel plated ornamentation on a stove was out of place: He gave the example of saying that a person’s eye sees first a stove’s fire pot, that the eye will naturally be drawn to the flames behind the grate or inside the open door. When the person’s eye tires of looking at the fire, then those eyes will want something different — something quieter and calmer. If the eye next sees ornamentation on the stove, something that also is glittery and glaring, it will affect the eye badly. Instead of the rest the eye seeks, the eye will travel away from the ornamentation and back to the fire itself, agitating the eye further, creating, artistically, a bad effect.
The stove manufacturers were interested in this point of view from a couple of angles. One, they found nickel plating stoves somewhat costly and were looking at a way to eliminate it; two, they felt undereducated in terms of the principles of art and wanted to know more about it. If they could convince their public that less nickel plating was the way to go, from an aesthetic point of view, then it would save them money and time in manufacturing the antique stove.
No related posts.