Marble Fireplace

[Walter S. Arnold]

Here's an SU design I created for a marble fireplace.
[WalterArnold]

[Walter S. Arnold]

And here's my finished carved fireplace in the shop, prior to shipping to my client. (well, almost finished; after setting it up I saw some needed modifications, and disassembled it and made the changes. I won't get another set-up photo until it gets installed).

I used Italian antique Broccatello di Siena marble to carve this one.

[boofredlay]

That is beautiful!

[tomsdesk]

Walter,
Love the marble color...never see before.
Nice work, Tom.

[Walter S. Arnold]

@tomsdesk said:

Walter,
Love the marble color...never see before.
Nice work, Tom.

Broccatello is a rare one. You'll see it in old churches; there are some magnificent baptismal fonts near the entrance to the Vatican (St. Peters) carved from this marble. It's a variety of Giallo di Siena, the golden yellow slightly transluscent marble from the area around Siena, Italy. (in the Chianti district South of Florence). The broccatello grade has heavy veining, usually purple or brown. I'm able to get hold of an occasional old block, quarried decades ago and hidden away in the back of some marble yards in Italy. When I bought this block it was black from dirt and covered with overgrowth of weeds... but the person who had it knew exactly what it was, he'd been hiding it and saving it a long time.

Here's a photo of a pair of bookmatched panels in this marble.

[WalterArnold]

[Shaun Tennant]

Walter, wow. thanks for posting the last image. stunning. I just stared at it for a while, absolutely magnificant, great find.

[alan wood]

Beautiful craftsmanship. What skill.
alan

[not registered yet]

%(#BF8000)[Congratulations on a superb effort ]

[BillyGrey]

[Ross Macintosh]

Walter -- I haven't forgotten that I said I'd be commissioning some of your work when (power of positive thinking) I win the lottery. I'll keep you busy!

Thanks for sharing images of your project with us.

Regards, Ross

[John Sayers]

lovely craftmanship, well done.

[Walter S. Arnold]

Here's another one. I'm still mostly using SU 4.0.

[Walter S. Arnold]

And heres the finished product. (well, the fireplace is finished, the room isn't). It was installed last week.

It's carved in white Carrara marble.

[Gaieus]

It was high time, Walter, to re-register. Again, welcome back and thanks for sharing this - the "final product" is just beautiful and it's good to see that you can use SU so efficiently in your workflow.

[Walter S. Arnold]

This one is closely related to the previous, just mild adjustments to the SU design. Different type of marble, Marquinia, a black Spanish marble with white veining.

I prefer not to do renderings; I find pencil communicates much better, renderings are just distracting for my clients. The pencil lets them use their imagination, renderings are more "frozen" and limiting. Also, with a piece of tracing paper over the SU printout, it just takes a few minutes; you can waste endless hours develpoing and tweeking renderings.

[art4med]

So, Walter,

You do the dimensional mark-up for your (sculpture or fireplace mantel) in SU--- and then send to the computer to carve? :") HA

Your detail is immense!

All the Best from a frustrated carver,
C>

[Walter S. Arnold]

Just finished this one, it's ready to crate and ship.
Those top corner pieces were a fun bit of geometry.

[Gaieus]

Hi Walter, "long time no see"!

Glad you posted again; these are so beautiful! Congratulation for the nice work and thanks for sharing it!

[Walter S. Arnold]

I was able to visit the site last month and take this photo of the installed fireplace.

[chrisjk]

What inspiring work - thank you for showing it to us. It's also fascinating to see how you use SU - I love the tidbit about tracing over the SU output!

[d12dozr]

Very cool to see the stages from design to finished product. Thanks for posting!