An unusual and charming 19th century Regency style Lumacella di San Vitale marble fireplace surround, a deep square splayed shelf sits above a frieze of carved reeding with a central unadorned tablet, flanked and supported by jambs displaying large corbels and capping’s, with further reeding encompassing intermittent splayed separators to the stepped jambs, all resting on moulded foot blocks.
 
English, circa 1930
Fireplace opening size: 912mm high x 870mm wide, width is adjustable in or out.
Each leg width: 200mm
Overall base width if the opening width is 870mm would be 1325mm
 
Lumachella di San Vitali marble started to be mined in the early Renaissance. It can be found in buildings such as the Basilica Di San Marco in Venice where there is a column, panel and a band of this marble in the floor and central nave, it is also present in many ecclesiastical buildings throughout Italy. This particular type of Lumachella from Verona in the Veneto is the most diffuse it was formed in the Jurassic period with molluscan debris and other mainly marine organisms such as seaweed, corals, fish etc. The Lumachelle have appealed to man since antiquity as they were considered mirabilia and testimony of the transformation from sea to land and vice versa. The Romans were attracted by its beauty and decorative quality, and in medieval times lumachelle and its fossils had superstitious connotations.
 
Height
42.52 in (108 cm)
Width
55.12 in (140 cm)
Depth
11.97 in (30.4 cm)