Elle Decoration
UK
Figulus Fireplace I by Paddy Pike for STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN
Fire Starters
The hearth was once the heart of the home—these designers and artists are endeavouring to return it to its rightful relevance
Words Clare Sartin
This London-based designer’s ‘Figulus‘ collection includes seating and tables, but it was the fireplaces that most excited him and STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN. ‘They’re nostalgic, and they’re a feature you don’t often see in a gallery,’ says Pike, who believes that the job of his fireplaces is to put the flame firmly centre stage. ‘The surround’s job is to be interesting enough to look at on its own, but to always point your eye back towards the fire inside.’ That’s the reason for his chosen from—an arch with plenty of enticing negative space that leads you inside, like a cave, to ‘where the real treasure lies.’ Each fireplace is crafted from basalt, sourced from Mount Vesuvius, with the designer working with makers Ranieri to fire high-gloss glazes straight onto the lava stone in the kiln. The result is colours that are not the norm for a fireplace. ‘Fireplaces tend to be built from marble, granite, cast iron or steel, and those materials typically give you black, grey and white. With ‘Figulus’ you get cobalt, crimson, mustard—colours that play off the spectrum of the flame. Fire, he says, is the origin of this design and by using lava stone, ‘made by intense heat and cooled over thousands of years’, he is going back to the source
