A mantelpiece is a place like no other. A snapshot of daily life in a home, it is solemn and esoteric, like a roadside shrine. The things that anchor us – the face of a beloved, a pebble from a favourite beach, pretty china out of reach of little hands – jostle for space with the fleeting joys of party invites and supermarket flowers. Pretty things, special things and funny things are strung together, like charms on a bracelet. Your own mantelpiece is a walk down memory lane that you can take from your sofa. Someone else’s is a set of clues to who they are.
For photographer Orlando Gili, the lure of the mantelpiece began, appropriately, at home. See the one below with the jug of parsley leaves beside mustard and marmalade pots? That’s his mum’s house. “A mantelpiece is a still life, but with so much personality it is also a portrait of the person, or people, whose house this is,” says Gili. His favourite mantelpieces are “a jumble of sentiment and appreciation of design. They belong to people with rich hinterlands.”
It’s the psychology of a mantelpiece that appeals to Gili, who mostly works in portraiture. “Sometimes a picture of the mantelpiece can feel like a truer reflection of sensibility and taste than photographing the person.” For this project, he thought about pairing the photos with portraits of their owners, but decided it would be “more interesting not knowing what the person looked like, and seeing their personality in the mantelpiece”.
All of life is here. “People have this tendency to copy each other, but not in what they put on the mantelpiece,” says Gili. The meaningful fights for space with the practical (lamps, clocks, matches). There is braggadocio (football trophies, fancy invitations) and mystery. The shape of a mantelpiece echoes an altar, lending a hint of the devotional. And even if a chimney is bricked in, the ghost-warmth of the flames makes a hearth feel like the heart of the room. To put an object on a mantelpiece is to give it pride of place.
Each of the unseen curators of these mantelpieces has an eye. A jumble of classical sculptures harmonise with bleached shells and a nude painting around a white marble fireplace. A Beethoven bust gazes earthward in contemplation, mirroring the man in the Barnett Freedman painting on the wall behind him. That jug of parsley is in conversation with the leafy watercolour propped against the mirror on the other side of the same mantelpiece. (Gili meddled as little as possible, he says. “I took the odd lamp off, but I didn’t go around tidying up.”)
Gili doesn’t have a mantelpiece at home. “In London they are mostly found in Victorian houses, and I live in an ex-council flat,” he says. “But a mantelpiece shows how much personality it is possible to project, even if you have only a tiny footprint of space.”
Most of the objects on display are treasures only to their owner. “It is never about money; it’s about what is special and beautiful to that person,” says Gili. “Showing off, but in the nicest possible way.”
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Valerie Grove, writer
This marble mantelpiece (see lead image, above) is in our front parlour in north London, and was destined to be used by us mainly at Christmas. The mirror is absurdly small and after we had our first Christmas there in 1981, I left both its faux wreath and the tasselled red-and-gold mantel cloth in place, which enrages our more stylish daughter.
The Moroccan red wall paint was copied from writer Jocasta Innes’s Spitalfields kitchen. Adding to the mad clutter are granny’s carriage clock, two sepia paintings from a Kentish Town junk shop, weird reptiles supplied by gecko-loving children, a grolla (drinking goblet) from Turin, and a mysterious gourd which was a wedding gift from Arianna Stassinopoulos (now Huffington). I then bought another one for myself.
I am fondest of the black-and-white photo of me aged two, in my bedroom, standing in front of a mural painted by my cartoonist father. The champagne bottle at the far left is decorated in scarlet swirls by my son’s wife, Coco. One day the children will drink its contents, and I shall be furious.
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Jonathan Ross, gallerist
The fireplace in the main bedroom (above) has the original art nouveau grate and period tiles. On the wall is an ink-and-wash sketch of my childhood home by the artist Adrian Daintrey, and a terracotta bust of me that my mother commissioned in the 1950s. The drawing on the far right is of my wife Camilla as a baby with her mother, the writer Joan Wyndham. The other objects are memorabilia from our life together.
I bought the red sequined shoes (they reminded me of Dorothy’s ruby slippers) for Camilla on a trip to the States early in our relationship. I was unaware that American and British sizes differ, and discovered on my return that they didn’t fit her. The dressing table is French and came from an antique shop.
What’s the cat hanger thing with the red waistcoat? My wife found it – it reminded her of our lovely Bengal cat, Barbarella. It is draped with a scarf to inject a bit of colour into the room.
My father found the nude painting over the bathroom fireplace (above) in a junk shop in the 1950s and gave it to me 20 years later for my own home. He said it reminded him of Peggy Ashcroft, which made me wonder how well he knew her …
The wooden angel is one of a pair from my parents-in-law, and the marine still life is by our friend, artist Lawrence Mynott, who found the frame first and made the painting to fit.
The classical figures, mostly bought in museum gift shops or junk shops, were collected by Camilla, who makes figurative sculptures herself. They share the space with shells, minerals and fossils, and a number of holograms of that sort of thing, and mostly date from the 1980s.
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Phillida Gili, illustrator and writer
My mantelpiece at home in London sums up much of my life. My late husband, Jonathan Gili, was a documentary film director who also had a passionate interest in typography, hence the various jars which we found typographically interesting. On the extreme right is a tiny box of chocolate sardines. This is a reminder of one of our publications (Jonathan and I also had a small private press) – a book consisting entirely of lithographs of eccentric and often beautiful sardine tins.
On the walls are various items of regency lustre china, which we used to collect, and one little Eric Ravilious plate (as a child my father, the wood engraver, letterer and artist, Reynolds Stone, taught me to revere his work).
The watercolour of cypress trees was done by my brother-in-law, illustrator and writer Ian Beck, in the mid-1970s.
We had two small children then, Oliver and Daisy: the trees represent our family. (Our son Orlando was born much later.) It has never moved from that central position since he gave it to us.
I painted the watercolour of flowers and a birthday card, which features my three grandchildren, for my husband, David. In front of the little regency ribbon-decorated cup – not easy to see – is a photo of Orlando in the arms of Oliver and their father, outside New College, Oxford.
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Jane Kasmin, patchwork quilt maker and collector
This mantelpiece is in the kitchen of our 19th-century terrace house in south-west London, and the jars and utensils are in constant use. The decorative wrought-iron pieces above are Diwali candle holders.
There is a postcard of a self-portrait by David Hockney, and a postcard of coloured light from a stained glass window in a French church taken by Orlando Gili’s father, Jonathan, who was a good friend. The object on the far right, which looks like a lantern, is a French water dispenser, used by absinthe drinkers. I bought it in Paris. Underneath the mustard pot is a stevedore’s hook.
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Ian Beck, artist
Most of the things on the mantelpiece in our living room act as a kind of shrine to friends, family and events. Centre stage is a bust of Beethoven cast by our son Laurence at a film prop shop. A similar bust sat between the speakers at a Hove gramophone society I attended circa 1960. To its left is a head from a damaged V&A plaster cast discarded by my brother in law, painter Edward Stone. A wooden cutout of a greyhound by artist Elizabeth Harbour is a tribute to our late dog Gracie.
There are two matchbooks branded for John Murray publishers and Dolcis shoes, both by designer Reynolds Stone; a wedding invitation designed by me for my daughter Lily’s wedding – she is a fan of Braque’s painting; and a miniature of my wife Emma and me at our wedding by friend and artist Lucy Su.
On the shelf below is metal bed plaque which was my father’s when he was in the Coldstream Guards. It is one of the few things I have of his along with his cigarette lighter (also on the lower shelf) after his premature death in 1962.
Above the mantle is a lithograph by Barnett Freedman entitled People, from 1947, one of a series issued by J Lyons (of the Corner Houses).
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Stella Cecil, theatre designer
This mantelpiece was in my front room in Soho, London, on the top floor of a 1900s mansion block. At the time, I was trying to establish myself as a costume designer, and had made the room into a studio.
The large black and white photograph is of my grandfather; resting on the frame are a bird and butterfly from a production I did with StreetWise Opera.
On the left is a photograph from one of my first jobs – creating and designing costumes for the London School of Samba at the Notting Hill Carnival. The carnival troupe are dressed as Greek urns. The fan is from my time at Giffords Circus.
My brother bought the Russian doll in Moscow around 2002. In post-Soviet Russia, they started making satirical dolls portraying world leaders: when you opened the George Bush doll, you found Boris Yeltsin and Osama bin Laden! The framed insect is from eBay.
The ticket stub on the left is for a show in Las Vegas; I visited friends who were doing a residency. And the black and white postcard in the middle is of a topless sailor using a sewing machine. My mother had written on the bottom: “Keep Sewing Stella! Happy birthday love Mama and Papa”.
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Michael Heath, cartoonist, and Hilary Heath, manager of the French House in Soho
Michael: My studio mantelpiece, in our house in Bloomsbury, London, is a disarray of photos, cartoons, love letters, chocolate sardines, booze, my MBE and other awards, underneath a towering Saul Steinberg poster from his New Yorker magazine cover entitled View of the World from 9th Avenue.
The wooden Glen Grant award on the far left is from 1982 for pocket cartoonist of the year, and I made the “Wanted” sign to hang around my neck for a photoshoot. There is also a “Heath” fanzine that my wife Hilary made, which unfortunately resembles an order of service, and some reminders of our trips to Australia.
My desk underneath is a joyful mess of broken pencils, spilt inks, ancient paints, stiff brushes, clippings and articles and the odd half-eaten chocolate bar.
Hilary: In the living room the mantelpiece is a bit of a shrine to Charlie Barker, Michael’s beloved dachshund, who first brought us together at the French House bar in Soho, where we met (and I’ve worked for 20 years). I fell for the dog immediately and the man shortly after. Michael had had him for several years by then, and we were heartbroken when he died. There are lots of sausage dogs on the mantelpiece to remind us of him.
Behind the M&H pots filled with Sharpie pens is a knitted portrait of Michael I commissioned from the fabulous Rod Melvin. There are some lovely hand-painted cards from friends, and necklaces by Samuel Coraux dangle from a lamp: the yellow “Fromage” one is my favourite. Over the mantelpiece is a signed picture of the hands of Thelonious Monk. And on the ground is a bowl holding a bunch of Australian fascinators. Chocolates get eaten, perfume gets squirted, porcelain figurines get broken and postcards arrive, so there is a gentle shifting around from time to time.
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Virginia Ironside, journalist
This is my “hands” collection. I love the idea of them rising out of the mantelpiece – which is in a windowless thoroughfare between the living room and kitchen in my west London house – as if screaming for help. I found the wallpaper at Osborne & Little, I think.
On the right is a child’s hand pressed into one of those pin-art frames. The wire hand on the right is a gadget for drying gloves. Next to it is one of those votive offerings – if your hand hurt you could buy a wax hand at the church and pay for a prayer to be said over it. Hanging off the mantelpiece is a claw-like object – a tool for loosening dry earth. It is so hand-like I added it to the collection.
The problem is people think I’ll be delighted with any old tat if it’s a hand. But each one is chosen for a reason.
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Stephen Bayley, author and critic
Aircraft and flight fascinate me: perhaps my first encounter with “beauty” was an aircraft component factory my father managed. This plane above our drawing room mantelpiece in south London was a present from my wife.
I can’t imagine how she got the fragile paper-and-wood thing into her Cinquecento. It’s a perfect archetype of a first world war monoplane. It doesn’t fly, but when I look at it, my imagination takes off.
The wind-up tin toy is vaguely modelled on a Junkers Ju 52. The perforated metal panel is from a Fieseler Storch: my son found it in a Berlin junk shop. Back on Earth, the plaster statuette is by ceramicist Laura Carlin, who pays impressive attention to oversized detail.
