Charlotte and I have just got back from New York, where we met up with clients, old friends and had a wonderful evening celebrating hundred years of Architectural Digest with Amy Astley and her team on Monday night. It was difficult to tear ourselves away from the city where we first met but it is always wonderful to walk back through the door of our London showroom and see the new antique chimneypiece arrivals displayed amongst some new designs we have added to our reproduction mantel collection.

We have over one hundred and thirty reproduction chimneypiece designs and we are adding five more designs to the collection again this year, two of which we stood in the showroom this week.

The Roma is a design based on an Italian Renaissance Italian bolection. We were inspired to create this design from an antique original that we discovered in Rome. It’s deep set, stepped bolection makes this a very handsome design.

We have also stood the Langley reproduction mantel from our 2019 reproduction collection, reimagined in Bardiglio marble. Strongly architectural in form, this fireplace is inspired from designs by the English ornamental designer Batty Langley (1696–1751). Bold, rusticated ‘quoins’ have been used to reinforce the strength of the design. It is one of my favourites.

We often rework the pure bolection mould in different marbles, from richly veined marbles to statuary white or pure black. Illustrated here is the Rupoli in black marble.

Many times we have been asked to reproduce the bolection in our bedroom at home in Camberwell which has prompted us to draw it and make an exact mould.

We have named this the Orchard mantel, crafted here in breche medici. The extraordinary range of colours from saffron yellows through to Pompeian pinks is exquisite and a true reminder of the alchemy involved in bespoke chimneypiece craftsmanship. It is only when you cut into the block of marble, that the true and complete beauty is ever revealed.