December 9, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the use of firescreens, polescreens and related technologies that shielded the eyes from the glow, heat or desolation of the hearth.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. We are
currently in the midst of rerunning our episodes about the
Heart from last year, which, if you've been listening to
the show well at least a year, you know that
these were episodes that talked about the central place that
the hearth has long had in human domiciles. This place
(00:36):
that is a source of heat, that can be a
source of food, and is also kind of like the
epicenter of culture for the immediate household, and also there
are all these additional supernatural ideas associated with it. It
becomes a gateway through which spirits might enter into the
home and so forth. Yeah, and so today's episode is
(00:57):
gonna be essentially kind of a sidebar to all of that.
That was partially inspired by a recent visit that I
made to New Orleans. Traveled there with my family, and
New Orleans, of course, is full of all sorts of
interesting history, and I was touring a mid nineteenth century
home that had been restored and redecorated so that it
(01:20):
would look like it did back in the day. And
you know, there are all sorts of little details and
technological innovations of the time period that are pretty fascinating,
but one in particular kind of caught my eye. And
it wasn't anything super advanced either. It wasn't related to
plumbing or ventilation, well a little bit to ventilation, as
(01:42):
we'll discuss, but it wasn't like high tech of the day.
In fact, it had some kind of antique aspects about it.
It was a fire screen. It was a decorative piece
on a little stand placed in front of the fireplace.
And I'm sure I've seen these before. I like, looking back,
I'm like, oh, there's here's one in this museum I
(02:03):
went to and so forth. I don't know that I've
ever really looked at one and thought about it all
that much, But in this moment, I really was taken
by it was why is that there? Why would we
have something between us and the fire? Because, as we
discussed in the heart episodes, like everybody loves looking at
a roaring fire, right, why would you put something in
front of it? And you know, this question has some
(02:25):
flaws in it as well, as we'll get into, but
that's what we're going to be talking about in this
episode today.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
What was the design on the fire screen? You saw it? Like,
what did it look like?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
It was the flowers or something it was. I think
that was part of it too. It was like, why
would you look at this when you could look at
a fire, which is, you know, so enthralling and ever
changing and kind of fills your mind with different ideas.
But the answer is going to be a little more
complex than that.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, So I had never really thought at all about
fire screens. I'm sure I've seen these things before, but
there they were invisible to me. I had never lingered
on them, so I never even thought to ask the
question what were they for? Where did they come from?
So investigating that was kind of interesting. I found to
mention one source some passages on the history of the
(03:14):
fire screen in a book by an art historian named
William C. Ketcham Junior. This guy wrote a bunch of
books about American furniture and antiques. The book is called Chests, Cupboards, Desks,
and other Pieces, published by A. Knop in nineteen eighty two.
Shout out that I found this because excerpts from the
book were screenshotted on a website called Buffalo Architecture and History,
(03:38):
which is still rocking and amazing. Early two thousands website
design with like white text or sorry, black text on
a white background divider bars. That great stuff made me
yearn for the old web.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh man, I wonder if I can scan to the
bottom of this page and join the web ring.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It should have like a visit tracker accounter. Yeah, you know, yeah,
but it's great. So yeah, excerpts from this book we're
on that website. I went and looked up the book
on its own. So catch um. Rites that fire screens
date back to the Middle Ages, when many homes, especially
larger homes, would be heated by these huge blazing fireplaces.
(04:20):
And the earlier screens that you would find going back
into the Middle Ages would have generally been quite utilitarian
in nature, less like the decorated pieces that we're going
to talk about in a minute. You see more of
the decorative, beautiful pieces later on, especially beginning around the
seventeenth century. So what is the utilitarian function of a
(04:42):
fire screen? Well, you might imagine if you've ever sat
out by a bonfire in the cold, or sat beside
a large fireplace when no other form of heat was
being used in a house, you'll know that it can
be equal parts cozy and uncomfortable. You know, if you
have no other heat source in a house and it's
(05:03):
very cold in the winter, you know, if you get
more than ten feet away from the fire, it's still freezing.
Like it doesn't A fireplace does not distribute heat evenly
throughout the house like forced air central heating does. You know?
Fourced air central heating uses convection. It warms the air
with vents throughout the house. The fire is just mainly
(05:23):
going to be sending radiant heat in straight lines out
into the room where the fire is, and it's also
heating up some of the stone, you know, tile or
metal infrastructure around it that also radiates some heat. So
most of the heat is just coming straight out of
the fire and around where the fire is. So you
step away from the fire and it's still cold. In fact,
(05:46):
we talked in our episodes on the Hearth about some
research showing that well, it might feel nice and toasty
right beside the fire. When you start a fire in
a fireplace, usually the rest of the house gets colder
because it's going to be sucking air in through little
gaps and cracks and the windows and the doors in
order to help drive the to help drive the convection
(06:09):
that's going to be flowing up out of the chimney.
So if your only heat source is a fireplace, it's
going to be cold stepping away from the fire. You
got to stay close to it to be warm. However,
when you're right up close, the warmth provided by a
large fire is not gentle. It roasts you, and you
might have to frequently adjust position or turn different parts
(06:30):
of your body toward the fire every few minutes to
prevent it from overheating any particular part of your flesh.
I'm sure you've had this experience.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Rob, Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe I've noticed it more
with campfires of course, where you know you're hanging out
by the campfire and well there's suddenly you know your
feet are heating up a little bit too much, and
then yeah, you go and cool off, and then pretty
soon you're chili and you have to move back next
to the fire. I did not have a fireplace in
(07:00):
my home, so I only get to enjoy them when
I'm like staying in a cabin or something, you know,
maybe at a hotel or a restaurant that has them.
But even then it's it's often kind of fleeting, so
you don't you don't get that like long term exposure
factor with one of these fires. And if I am
encountering a fire, it's often not going to be the
kind of roaring hearth that we're talking about, you know,
(07:21):
historically here, it might be one of these more these
tamer like gas powered features that we have today, which
are great to look at, do put off some heat,
but not on the level that we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Also, rarely these days in an American building is it
going to be the only source of heat. A lot
of times you'll have the you know, the central heat running,
forced air heating, and then also you have a supplemental
fire in the fireplace because it's nice, not because it's
the only way to heat the house.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, we do it as a more than more often
than not, as a luxury on top of whatever we're
doing to heat the place.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Right, So, when you got a big fire in the
fireplace and it's your only source of it can be
uncomfortable to be too far away from it and uncomfortable
to be too close because you're getting you're getting roasted
with a really big fire. Also, I've read you know,
the glare of the light can sometimes be uncomfortable to
look at, depending on how bright it is and other
conditions in the room. One thing I read mentioned in
(08:18):
a few sources was that another function of various screens
and guards of different kinds covering a fireplace, especially going
back into the Middle Ages, one function of these various
types of coverings, especially the tighter coverings, was to block
cold air drafts when the fireplace was not in use.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah. So, so two things I want to say on
what you just shared. First of all, in terms of
the glare, I think this is something that it's easy
to overlook as a non like regular fireplace user, is
since the fireplace becomes a special treat. Yeah, we think, like,
like I was thinking, like, why would you look at
anything else? Like you have the fireplace, look at it.
(08:57):
But in general it makes sense that, yeah, around it
all the time, you have other things you might want
to do. You may wish to socialize more directly with
the people around you, or read a book or work
on a craft, and the light might be too intense
for that. You might want to focus your eyes on
something else. Other than the fire, and in this reminded
me a little bit of the There's a scene in
(09:20):
the recent Nonseratu adaptation where we meet count Overlock more
officially in this big room that has a roaring fire,
and it's fabulously at the same time both really dim
and dark and also like blinding. So I feel like
that scene maybe gets that some of the paradoxical realities
(09:41):
of a hearth lit and hearth heated room, I think so. Yeah,
and then the empty hearth is another important factor, one
that I think is also easy to forget about if
you don't have a fireplace, or if you have a
modern fireplace that can maybe be s up a little
bit easier when it's not in use. But yeah, this
(10:02):
idea that it is a potentially drafty affair in and
of itself, and so you might want to block access
to the wind to some degree, cut down on the
airflow or even the sight of the empty fireplace, which
I know is another factor involved here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Secondary purpose for fire screens, especially certain forms of them.
We'll get into different forms as we go along, but
the wider paneled forms sitting closer to the floor were
often used to cover up what was considered the unsightly
and depressing image of an empty fireplace when there was
(10:43):
not a fire burning in it. So a nice decorative
fire screen would hide the sooty hollow and replace it
with a nice design or at least a neutral surface.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
This I understand now that it's pointed out to me,
because the fireplaces that I have grown up around at
different times, they were often not in use. When they
were not in use, sometimes things it would like they'd
be like maybe some sort of a popoury kind of
a little thing placed in there to sort of, yeah,
tend to make it a little more comfortable and less
look less empty, and maybe make you less sad about
(11:16):
the fact that we can't use the fireplace right now
because it's July, right.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So, fire screens are functional. They do have a purpose.
They were invented to allow you to heat a room
with a large, hot fire, but shield the people sitting
next to the fire from the most intense direct radiant
heat and glare from the blaze. Fire screens, depending on
how they're defined, sometimes people make a distinction between the
(11:42):
terms fire screen and fire guard. Things that are I
think more often called fire guards would have the benefit
as well of blocking sudden ejections from the fire, like
sparks and embers. But if you think about that, you know,
some of these fire screens we're going to talk about
it made a very delicate flammable material and so they
(12:03):
probably you wouldn't want to use them for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
But yeah, this sort clearly they were not intended to
catch any sparks or flaming logs that might come falling
out of the fireplace.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But you know, as we've probably all seen around a
lot of fireplaces, there might be a metal mesh or
wire or some kind of metal and glass design, and
these are more in the fire guard zone. These would
not only provide some shielding from the most intense radiant
heat and the glare, they would also prevent anything from
(12:35):
being ejected through. You know, they would be a stopper there.
But in addition to these functional uses, fire screens were
also decorative so catch them in this book mentions that
in eighteenth century American examples quote the panels displayed fine
needlework or later paintings, often made by the women of
the house, as well as prints or various fabrics, And
(12:59):
if you look up examples of eighteenth century American fire screens.
I guess that's probably what you would have been seeing
in the house you visited, Rob. Many of them are
absolutely beautiful, beautiful, elaborate designs. I just wanted to mention
one that caught my eye when I was just image
searching for these things, I found images of a screen
(13:19):
hosted on a blog post for the Winterthur Museum in
Delaware by a student named Tess Friedman. This image, Rob,
I've got for you to look at in the outline.
It's of what's called a pole screen. I'll explain that
more in a minute. A pole screen that was made
in New York between seventeen sixty and seventeen seventy five
(13:41):
with a mahogany base. The screen is a linen canvas
with an elaborate hand embroidered image made out of yarn
and silk, and it looks basically like a framed painting
on a rectangular canvas attached to a pole on a
wooden tripod, except, of course, it's not a painting. It's
an embroidery design. The embroidered image on the canvas depicts
(14:03):
a shepherdess and a shepherd out in this pastoral scene
with sheep roaming the hills beside a city, and the
male shepherd is kneeling in front of the shepherdess. He's
got his hand over his heart, looks he looks like
he's asking for her attention or something. Maybe maybe he's
asking her to marry him, and she seems to be
kind of considering the offer or whatever it is. And
(14:25):
I think, what's so captivating to me about this piece
of furniture is imagining this beautiful, delicate work of art,
delicate both in construction and even in subject matter, being
used as the shield from a roaring fire. But again,
this contradiction is somewhat not a contradiction when you understand
(14:46):
how these different types of fire shield furniture were used.
There are actually lots of different designs for fire screens
and fireguards. Some are wide and positioned on the floor
closer to the fire to provide general protection to the
room or to the seating area around the hearth. Others,
(15:07):
like this fire screen would be positioned usually closer to
the person, with a targeted blocking radius, kind of like
a little parasol for the fireplace, And these are often
said to serve the purpose of shielding a person's face
rather than their whole body. This form again is often
called the pole screen, and you can find a lot
(15:29):
of examples like this that are a pole, a wooden pole,
or a metal pole coming up off of a round
or tripod base on the floor and then it's holding
maybe a round or a rectangular screen of some kind,
often with a beautiful design on it. And this type
of furniture again would not be placed right next to
(15:50):
the fire. Instead, you should picture it maybe at the
edge of a couch where a lady was resting, and
the screen would be between next to the lady's head
between her in the fire. Now I also mentioned that
the pole screen, the smaller pole screen, is not the
only design in contrast to these smaller elevated screens. Ketchum
says that in the early nineteenth century, the cheval design
(16:13):
became more popular in American homes. It was not invented
at this time, but it became more popular in America
around then. The cheval design, named after the French word
for horse, is a wide rectangular panel mounted load to
the floor on two pairs of short legs, So it
is kind of like a little you know, picture a
little sawhorse, but instead of a cross beam. It's a
(16:36):
big rectangular panel or screen.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And these often really have a you really get a
sense of please don't look at the fireplace with these. Yeah,
it's almost like like, pay no attention to what is
behind the beautiful parrot decorated work of art.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Right, Or here's an angel with a bunch of blooming
flowers all around her, and then behind her is the blaze.
Ketchum finally says that fire screens began to fade out
of use and become less common as modern forms of
domestic heating takeover in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now, one thing that I picked up on during my
tour in New Orleans was this idea that people of
the time might want to avoid looking into the fire
for some reason or another, and it was compared to
staring at a television too much or something. I was
rather intrigued by that idea, I have to say, though
(17:31):
I did not have much luck in finding any specific
Victorian notion of this situation where there was some sort
of an idea that it was bad luck or thought
bad for the eyes, especially to gaze into the fire.
At the same time, again acknowledging that there was a
(17:51):
need to shield yourself from the heat and or glare
of the fire. But I was expecting that maybe there
might be something out there of a tradition where it
was you know, bad luck or bad manners or bad
health to do so. But I don't know. It seems
based on what I was finding, that there's little in
the way of cultural opposition to steering at a fire
(18:13):
in general for human beings outside of some very specific
cultural examples. Certainly nothing with a wide enough footprint in
European and then American traditions of the time as far
as I can tell. That being said, however, as we
discussed in the Hearth episodes, there all these rich ideas
(18:34):
of the heart is some sort of a supernatural pathway
through which things might enter the home. There's plenty of
room for a tradition like that to emerge, even if
it's very local, and you know, particularly if you're thinking
of a place like New Orleans, where you have all
these different cultures coming together and different ideas merging with
each other. So I'm not going to completely rule out
the possibility, but I wasn't able to find much on it.
(18:56):
What you will find, however, is an idea that these
screens were important to keep the cosmetics of Victorian women
from melting, essentially from their face melting off when they
were hit with the intense heat of a fireplace, and
therefore you would need to have a screen in place,
(19:18):
either handheld or on a pole to protect them. This,
as far as I can tell, so this is widely
discredited as a myth. But at the same time, it
seems like this is maybe more on the exaggeration end
of the myth spectrum. So as we've been discussing, like
there were practical reasons to want to keep the heat
(19:40):
off of your face and the glare of the fireplace
out of your eyes. Could it mess up your makeup?
I don't know, maybe not, but it doesn't seem to be.
You know, the prime reason for this, I think where
it becomes a myth is when people say, oh, well
they had that because ladies had wax based cosmetics and
they didn't want the melt. Not the prime leading reason
(20:04):
as far as I can tell. Now, I want to
briefly mention another tradition just because I feel like it
helps us maybe understand like some of the broad strokes
of this sort of technology, The idea of placing some
sort of a screen between you and a heat source
or between the heat source and other parts of your environment.
(20:26):
And in that we have what is known in Japanese
as a biobu, and I maybe butchering that pronunciation now
byaba in general is just a folding screen, often decorated
with calligraphy or other images. These eventually found their way
into European and American homes as well during the eighteenth
(20:48):
century and then beyond. It led to a tradition in
Mexico as well of a screen tradition that was inspired
by it. And the word literally means protect action from
the wind or wind wall in Japanese. And so you
might use this to break up a space or indeed
to sort of like prevent a draft from moving all
(21:10):
the way through a living environment. But then you also
have a frosaki biago or furnace wind screen, and this
is also decorative, sometimes a fine work of art, but
it is specifically used to protect the furo or portable
tea brasier from drafts that might blow on the coals
(21:32):
and scatter the ashes and disrupt the tea ceremony that
you're conducting with this little portable, little portable stove. The
stove would have used charcoal, it would have provided the
specific heat needed for the creation of proper macha tea.
So it's one of these things that is again highly ceremonial,
(21:53):
highly esthetic, but the at least original idea in its
design is Okay, if you're going to have some sort
of a heat source, a burning heat source, you might
need to prevent the wind from catching it because this
could at the very least disrupt things, get some ash
where you don't want some ash, or it could potentially
serve as a fire hazard. Again, easy to take all
(22:17):
this for granted because central heating in a home, like
your airflow is part of the way your home is heated. Like,
it's all built into the system. This problem has been
solved for you, and you don't have to worry as
much about that air circulation and how it relates to
your heat and your heat sources.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah, one of the many pieces of modern domestic technology
that we often just take for granted. We forget to
even appreciate that it's there. Yeah, all right, are you
ready to talk about fuel sources?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, let's get into the fuel sources, because this is
another thing that I just didn't think about at all
when I was making you snap judgments about fire screens
as I was touring that house.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Right, so forewarning that I'm going to begin this with
a question that I was not in the time preparing
for today's episode able to find a conclusive answer to.
I'm only going to get halfway there, but I did
uncover some interesting things along the way, so please bear
with me as we go along. But what I wanted
to talk about was a distinction between coal fires and
(23:28):
wood fires, because when we in America think of a
fire and a fireplace today, I bet almost everybody thinks
of a wood fire where the fuel is split wedges
of seasoned hardwood. But there are other sources of fuel,
of course, and at other times and places in history,
they might be more common in domestic fires, not just
(23:50):
in say, a coal furnace or a coal stove, but
even in open hearth fireplaces in the home. And a
big alternative here is coal. If you were to go
look in the fireplace of, for example, a middle class
or working class home in London in the eighteenth or
nineteenth century, the fire in the fireplace would almost certainly
(24:12):
be a coal fire and not a wood fire. Now,
this doesn't hold true everywhere around the world. In fact,
it wouldn't hold true even everywhere in Britain at the time.
If you went out into the countryside, you'd probably still
find a lot of houses burning wood, But in the
city coal would be the go to fuel source for
cooking and heating in most homes.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah. For a seasonally appropriate literary example of this, in
A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is something of a coal miser,
and much is often made of this in adaptations like
I grew up watching Disney's A Christmas Carol, and I
included a screenshot here for you, Jove. I haven't seen
this in a while, but you can see Mickey Mouse's
cratch it holding up a single piece of coal. You cold,
(24:59):
it has not been lit. He wants to put it
in the stove, and Scrooge is giving him a hard
time about it, like, now, you're you're going to put
us out of business if you've used one piece of coal. Yeah,
I had to look up any mention of coal in
the original literary work. I'm going to read a passage
here the door of Scrooge's counting house was open that
he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, in
(25:21):
a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank, was
copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked
like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge
kept the coal box in his own room, and so
surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the
master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.
(25:42):
Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried
to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not
being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You're a mean one, missed Scrooge.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, so yeah, coal cole, it's right in our face.
You know, ours probably one of, if not the most
famous example of their snapshot of Victorian urban living. And yeah,
the coal is right there, front and center.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
That's right. So there were basic economic reasons for this
preference for coal. Coal has a higher energy density and
thus is more cost effective to transport across great distances.
So if you live in a deforested area or an
area where there was never any access to wood, this
(26:30):
would certainly include a lot of cities. In the industrial age,
both wood and coal would have to travel a great
distance to get to your home, and coal burns hotter
and longer, so you're typically going to get a lot
more bang for your buck buying coal than buying wood.
You know, if you're shipping wood somewhere, you have huge
(26:50):
amount of what you're shipping is just unburnable stuff in
the way to the wood, water and air and stuff
trapped in there. So coal is a much more or
energy dense and valuable product by weight. Of course, out
in the country, if there's still trees nearby it, it
probably makes economic sense to burn wood, whether you're gathering
(27:11):
it yourself from around your house or buying it from
somebody nearby. However, even many rural homes in Britain I
think by the nineteenth century had made the switch to
coal when it became available by rail lines, because it
was just a cheaper source of heat to acquire. Now,
the urban coal dominance trend has not held true everywhere
(27:33):
and at every time in history. It's not just like
once you live in a densely populated urban environment you
switch from wood to coal. From what I've been reading,
it seems like in big cities in America in the
nineteenth century, you'd find kind of a mix of coal
fired homes and wood fired homes. There were some of each,
and around the world you would have all kinds of
(27:53):
different pressures acting on what fuel source people used, different
local economic pressures, what types of material were available, what
forms of transportation for material were available. Climate, Oh, not
just the availability of wood and coal, but like what
types of wood and what types of coal, because that
makes a big difference. The coal often used in London
(28:16):
in the you know, the seventeenth through the nineteenth century,
would have been what they called sea coal, which was
a bituminous coal, a kind of nasty coal. And there
were even taste and cultural preferences about what types of
fuel to use, and these could rule the day. I
came across this thing of I'd never heard about this before,
(28:36):
but French writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in
particular talking about the use of coal fire in London
as just so gross. I dug up it. And there
was an eighteenth century book called a Tour to London
or New Observations on England and its Inhabitants, published by
(28:59):
Lockyer David seventeen seventy two by an author named Pierre
Jean Grossly. Grossly was an eighteenth century French magistrate and author,
kind of a travel writer.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Of his day.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
He wrote about Italy as well, but he wrote about
his travels in England, including a lot of amusing and
often unflattering views of London. And he really thought the
use of domestic coal fire made the city disgusting and miserable.
There's even a passage about how it made all the
food taste bad. I want to read this quote all
(29:31):
that grow in the country about London. Cabbage, radishes and
spinach being impregnated with the smoke of coal which fills
the atmosphere of that town have a very disagreeable taste
which they communicate to the meat wherewith they have been boiled.
I ate nothing good of this sort in London, but
some asparagus, which doubtless grew at a good distance from
(29:52):
the capitol.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And then after this, Grossly has some more general notes.
He says, quote the smoke of sea coal fires with
which the atmosphere of London is generally filled may be
reckoned amongst the physical causes of the melancholy of its inhabitants.
The terrestrial and mineral particles with which that smoke is impregnated,
insinuate themselves into the blood of those who are always
(30:15):
inhaling them, render it dull and heavy, and carry with
them the new principles of melancholy. Oh wow, So not
the only time people complained about pre modern London is
for being polluted. But I don't know, I found this
an especially evocative and targeted attack on the use of
coal in the city.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. I mean, it's like he's saying, this is just
a problem of culture here at large. It's not just
that everything but the asparagus tastes bad. It's just like
it has made everybody miserable and sad.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah. So there are different economic pressures in different preferences
about domestic fuel sources at different times and places throughout history,
and of course that's changed again in the modern era.
You know, in modern homes, so that with modern forms
of heating like gas or electric furnaces or heat pumps
and houses like this, when you still have a fireplace,
(31:13):
it's usually a supplemental esthetic heat source. Of course, there
will be counterexamples to this. Some homes still really need
the fireplace heat. But a lot of you know, a
lot of houses with fireplaces now don't really need them
for heating. They're just a nice thing to have. And
in those cases, it seems a lot of people prefer
wood for these optional fires, at least most people in
(31:35):
America do. I wonder if there's anywhere people actually have
an esthetic preference for coal fires. It seems kind of
unlikely to me, but I'd be interested to be surprised.
I would like to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I guess one of the things about coal fires, when
you get into the technology of like Victorian era technology especially,
is that hot coals could then easily be transported out
of a primary fire into very like smaller stoves and
heated devices, you know. Yea, So it does have that
going for it.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That's right. Yeah, And the ease of transporting you know,
a shovelful of hot coals again, I guess that's probably
down to the energy density of coal compared to that
of wood.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah. Yeah, less running around indoors with flaming sticks as well.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah. But anyway, so this brings me to differences between
coal and wood as a fireplace fuel. A coal fire
will typically produce a more consistent supply of strong radiant
heat than a wood fire. From what I've read, it's
normal for a wood fire to maybe be hotter right
(32:41):
at the beginning is that's really blazing up. But then
as the wood begins to burn down, it rapidly cools
off and produces less heat over time, needing more tending
and replenishment. A coal fire is going to get you
a hot stream of radiant heat going, and it'll keep
going for a long time. And so I was reading
about this, and it made me wonder, is it possible
(33:04):
fire screens or fireguards were more needed in homes that
burned one type of fuel instead of the other. For example,
because coal puts out a steadier, longer lasting stream of
strong radiant heat. Would a coal fire be more likely
to become uncomfortable without a guard of some kind for
the face or the skin? And you know, basically, does
(33:27):
a coal fire more resemble a broiler aimed at the
people by the hearth side? The answer, unfortunately, is I
don't know for sure. I was looking and couldn't find
direct historical confirmation of this idea, but given the differences
between the heat produced by wood versus coal fires, it
seems to be plausible that there might be a kind
(33:48):
of different experience around a coal fire than a wood fire,
and that experience might manifest in a stronger desire to
put screens between yourself and the blaze. So yeah, if
any listeners out there have more experience it's with this
kind of thing and would like to comment on this issue,
I'd be interested to read your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, any field reports would be greatly appreciate.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Okay, Rob, if you're up for another Victorian side I
wanted to mention an interesting video I came across from
the UK National Archives called The Victorian Fireside, hosted by
a specialist with their collections named Olivia Gayjagg, and I
thought this was interesting because Gaychag makes a point in
(34:38):
this video to emphasize the cultural meaning of the fireside
for middle class homes in Victorian Britain. So this is
getting into how fire screens figured into you know, not
just fire screens, but fire screens and lots of associated
furnishings and technology. Things around the fireplace are not just
functional in nature, but they mean something within the cultural context,
(35:02):
and this is exploring that, certainly within Victorian Britain. So
in Victorian Britain during the wintertime, she talks about how
the hearth side was kind of a standard gathering place
for household activities. By the fire, you'd sit and talk,
you'd play games, you might eat meals. And in these
middle class Victorian homes, the hearth was usually the center
(35:24):
of the drawing room or the parlor, which was the
part of the house that arguably carried the most social
and cultural meaning. Basically, all people at all times in
some ways express who they are through the design and
decoration of their homes, but obviously to different extents and
in different ways. And I understand the argument here to
(35:45):
be that the Victorian drawing room or parlor was an
area of particular focus for expressing the homeliness of a
home in Victorian Britain. In gaych Egg's words quote, a
comfortable and well furnished drawing room became symbolic of some
of the key notions of Victorian morality. And this was
(36:07):
in one sense an inward facing message as a place
the family could gather and do things that expressed their
bonds as a family, you know, so they would kind
of understand themselves through this space. But it was also
an outward facing message as the place that would message
to guests and visitors things about the family's identity, including
(36:27):
everything from economic class and status to esthetic taste and
moral values, and so these things that would communicate those
ideas included a lot of furnishings and decorations related to
the fireplace and its immediate surroundings. And fire screens are
a great example here. You could think also of all
(36:48):
kind you know, coal buckets that you would restock the
coal fire with, and you know metal fire guards, but
also fire screens, fire screens with the embroidery or other
designs on cloth. On these pole screens we've talked about,
these would often be a way for the female head
of the household to express her taste, her skill if
(37:10):
she made the design herself, which was often the case,
and moral virtues. And gay Jag highlights one particular design
for a pole screen, that is, it's on a pole
with a tripod at the base, like the other one
I was talking about earlier, but this one has baby
fire breathing dragons made out of iron on the three
studs of the tripod base. Nice and then it comes
(37:33):
up to a very actually quite small fire screen it looks,
you know, just small enough to block the face from
the fire, which has a circular embroidered design and then
an elaborate frame around it. But this video really makes
the distinction, for one thing, between fire screens like pole
(37:53):
screens and the heartier things that would more often be
called fire guards, citing these brass based samples. No doubt
these things would get very hot sitting right in front
of the fire, but those would provide more solid protection
against sparks or other material ejections from the fire, because again,
you know of a pole screen like this that's a
(38:13):
linen canvas or embroidered cloth or something something made out
of wood, these would obviously be highly flammable, so they
would not be something designed to go right up against
the fire. They would get scorched. So if you're talking
about a fire screen that goes right up against the fire,
you're going to be talking about different kinds of materials.
But anyway, the main point being made in this video
(38:35):
that I thought was worth noting was that at least
within the Victorian middle class household in Britain, the fireplace
and its immediate surroundings and furnishings are just a big
part of how a domestic unit expressed and understood who
they were. And so these decorated fire screens were not
just functional. They carried a lot of meaning and it
had people's identities kind of poured into them.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, And as is often the case with these sorts
of things, sometimes the aesthetics completely dwarf any functionality that
it might have had, and you can see this in
some of the more elaborate designs. One that really caught
my eyes. This is one that you'll find various antiques
listed with varying degrees of context and information. I found
(39:20):
a Victorian fireplace screen on mossinfog dot com and I've
included a picture of it here for you, Joe. It
is made apparently with real taxidermide and hummingbirds, like seemingly
dozens of them, and I cannot tell. I couldn't tell
from the description or from certainly from the pictures whether
(39:42):
there is a white screen involved here because it's shot
against a white background, or if this is just open,
if it's just like little artificial branches with a bunch
of stuffed hummingbirds on them. In either case, this seems
very much like the sort of fire screen that would
maybe be in front of an inactive fireplace, or if
(40:03):
it were in front of a live fireplace, it would
be positioned good ways out. Otherwise you're just going to
roast your poor little taxidermy hummingbirds, and or it's going
to shine right through it.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah, that's the other point. If this is in fact
open and not a solid screen, that's not going to
be blocking a lot of heat, and certainly the taxidermy birds,
I'm sure with scorch. Yeah. So yeah, I wonder about
the usage here. I wonder if there were fire screens
that were where the function in blocking the intense heat
(40:36):
from the fire was not really a consideration, and there
were some that were just decorative. They're just there to
cover up a fire screen that's not currently or cover
up a fire that's not currently in use, or just
there to i don't know, position farther away and kind
of have something nice to look at the fire through.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, And I definitely found it just a terrific example
of this and an older source. I was reading Representative
metal Work by Cora Lynn Daniels and this was published
in the Decorator and Furniture eighteen eighty five. So we
can look this up. I pulled it up on jay Store,
and the paper here describes some elaborate antique fireplace elements,
(41:20):
including a salamander decorated grate, so talking about the mythic
salamander little reptilian creatures that were said to live and
emerge or be born from burning logs. And it also
highlights a fire screen that is made out of antique brass,
(41:40):
jewels and glass, which itself was set before a hearth
that also featured bits of colored glass placed before the fire,
but behind the fire screen. So the idea here would
apparently be you'd have these pieces of colored glass that
are catching the light of the roaring fire, and essentially
(42:00):
it's like you have a it's almost like a concert
light display in your home. It sounds pretty splendid. Trippy,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, trippy. It's like some sort of
a trippy light effect that you might purchase nowadays. Here's
what the article says. Quote set before the gleaming glass
coals which shone through this gorgeous screen and one hundred
(42:23):
changeful hues, nothing could be imagined more effective to light
one corner or side of a room done in deep,
warm shade of brown crimson or maroon, or to supply
a glow of color to an apartment finished in snowy
white and gilt, although the effect of the former would
be somewhat more artistic to our thinking, it.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Seems kind of like a nineteenth century equivalent of a
I don't know, lava lamp or a star projector or
something a light based curiosity.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah. Yeah, And you can tell from the illustration didn't
include a photo obviously, but an illustration of what has
looked like, and you get the sense of almost like
a piece of stained glass that was positioned in front
of the fireplace. Yeah. So at a basic level, you
can imagine that these screens are about just manipulating light
in the room. I have to read. There's another snippet
(43:13):
from this that I just found amusing though, where they're
just talking about how the popularity of various antiques and
maybe the dubious historical notes associated with them. The author writes,
to those who have a craze for the antique or
a rage for genuine old wares, it might be a
beneficent lesson to examine this modern work so superior in beauty, richness,
(43:37):
and finish to most of the things which quote came
over on the Mayflower. The author then goes on to
jestingly speculate just how many governor's chairs and tables the
Mayflower must have contained if all of the claims of
authenticity were correct.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Nice, but in general, I didn't even know that was
a common thing people say their furniture was on the Mayflower.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Or may I don't know. I was not aware of
this either. Maybe it was a thing around eighteen eighty
five where everyone claimed to have had antique furniture that
came over on the Mayflower, or something to that effect.
I think they're just basically saying, like most of a
lot of the stuff that out there is claiming to
be super old, maybe isn't as old. But at the
(44:22):
very least, I love the idea of this particular hearth
that the author is describing here, with its salamanders, with
its pieces of colored glass, and then this rich ornate
screen that goes in front of the fire that I
don't know. I may be just blowing it out of
proportion in my mind, but I'm just imagining a sitting
(44:43):
room lit up like a disco, and it's pretty fabulous.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I would roller skatee in that drawing. Room. That sounds cool, But.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
It also sounds like the sort of innovation you might
employ again in an environment where a fireplace is not
a special occasion thing but something that you use all
the time during certain seasons, and therefore there would be
more of an effort to improve upon it and spruce
it up with all these varying ideas, Whereas I mean,
for many of us now, like if you get to
(45:12):
fire up the fireplace, that is the treat in and
of itself, and you are not thinking about, well, what
kind of colored lights can I throw into the scenario, But.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
If you need it for heat every night, you might
be thinking like, can I get some more TV channels
on this?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yes? Yeah, how do I get satellite on this hearth?
All right?
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Does that do it for fire screens?
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I think so? Yeah. So we present this again as
essentially kind of an episode linked sidebar for our discussion
of the heart that is now being featured involved episodes
hearing the stuff to blow your mind feed But we'd
love to hear from everyone out there, Folks with fireplaces,
Folks with fireplaces in their past traditions than their culture
(45:52):
right in, we'd love to hear from you. Maybe you
can help us understand some of these lingering questions we have.
In the meantime, we'll just remind you of this. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes
on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Sent huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. We are
currently in the midst of rerunning our episodes about the
Heart from last year, which, if you've been listening to
the show well at least a year, you know that
these were episodes that talked about the central place that
the hearth has long had in human domiciles. This place
(00:36):
that is a source of heat, that can be a
source of food, and is also kind of like the
epicenter of culture for the immediate household, and also there
are all these additional supernatural ideas associated with it. It
becomes a gateway through which spirits might enter into the
home and so forth. Yeah, and so today's episode is
(00:57):
gonna be essentially kind of a sidebar to all of that.
That was partially inspired by a recent visit that I
made to New Orleans. Traveled there with my family, and
New Orleans, of course, is full of all sorts of
interesting history, and I was touring a mid nineteenth century
home that had been restored and redecorated so that it
(01:20):
would look like it did back in the day. And
you know, there are all sorts of little details and
technological innovations of the time period that are pretty fascinating,
but one in particular kind of caught my eye. And
it wasn't anything super advanced either. It wasn't related to
plumbing or ventilation, well a little bit to ventilation, as
(01:42):
we'll discuss, but it wasn't like high tech of the day.
In fact, it had some kind of antique aspects about it.
It was a fire screen. It was a decorative piece
on a little stand placed in front of the fireplace.
And I'm sure I've seen these before. I like, looking back,
I'm like, oh, there's here's one in this museum I
(02:03):
went to and so forth. I don't know that I've
ever really looked at one and thought about it all
that much, But in this moment, I really was taken
by it was why is that there? Why would we
have something between us and the fire? Because, as we
discussed in the heart episodes, like everybody loves looking at
a roaring fire, right, why would you put something in
front of it? And you know, this question has some
(02:25):
flaws in it as well, as we'll get into, but
that's what we're going to be talking about in this
episode today.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
What was the design on the fire screen? You saw it? Like,
what did it look like?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
It was the flowers or something it was. I think
that was part of it too. It was like, why
would you look at this when you could look at
a fire, which is, you know, so enthralling and ever
changing and kind of fills your mind with different ideas.
But the answer is going to be a little more
complex than that.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, So I had never really thought at all about
fire screens. I'm sure I've seen these things before, but
there they were invisible to me. I had never lingered
on them, so I never even thought to ask the
question what were they for? Where did they come from?
So investigating that was kind of interesting. I found to
mention one source some passages on the history of the
(03:14):
fire screen in a book by an art historian named
William C. Ketcham Junior. This guy wrote a bunch of
books about American furniture and antiques. The book is called Chests, Cupboards, Desks,
and other Pieces, published by A. Knop in nineteen eighty two.
Shout out that I found this because excerpts from the
book were screenshotted on a website called Buffalo Architecture and History,
(03:38):
which is still rocking and amazing. Early two thousands website
design with like white text or sorry, black text on
a white background divider bars. That great stuff made me
yearn for the old web.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh man, I wonder if I can scan to the
bottom of this page and join the web ring.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It should have like a visit tracker accounter. Yeah, you know, yeah,
but it's great. So yeah, excerpts from this book we're
on that website. I went and looked up the book
on its own. So catch um. Rites that fire screens
date back to the Middle Ages, when many homes, especially
larger homes, would be heated by these huge blazing fireplaces.
(04:20):
And the earlier screens that you would find going back
into the Middle Ages would have generally been quite utilitarian
in nature, less like the decorated pieces that we're going
to talk about in a minute. You see more of
the decorative, beautiful pieces later on, especially beginning around the
seventeenth century. So what is the utilitarian function of a
(04:42):
fire screen? Well, you might imagine if you've ever sat
out by a bonfire in the cold, or sat beside
a large fireplace when no other form of heat was
being used in a house, you'll know that it can
be equal parts cozy and uncomfortable. You know, if you
have no other heat source in a house and it's
(05:03):
very cold in the winter, you know, if you get
more than ten feet away from the fire, it's still freezing.
Like it doesn't A fireplace does not distribute heat evenly
throughout the house like forced air central heating does. You know?
Fourced air central heating uses convection. It warms the air
with vents throughout the house. The fire is just mainly
(05:23):
going to be sending radiant heat in straight lines out
into the room where the fire is, and it's also
heating up some of the stone, you know, tile or
metal infrastructure around it that also radiates some heat. So
most of the heat is just coming straight out of
the fire and around where the fire is. So you
step away from the fire and it's still cold. In fact,
(05:46):
we talked in our episodes on the Hearth about some
research showing that well, it might feel nice and toasty
right beside the fire. When you start a fire in
a fireplace, usually the rest of the house gets colder
because it's going to be sucking air in through little
gaps and cracks and the windows and the doors in
order to help drive the to help drive the convection
(06:09):
that's going to be flowing up out of the chimney.
So if your only heat source is a fireplace, it's
going to be cold stepping away from the fire. You
got to stay close to it to be warm. However,
when you're right up close, the warmth provided by a
large fire is not gentle. It roasts you, and you
might have to frequently adjust position or turn different parts
(06:30):
of your body toward the fire every few minutes to
prevent it from overheating any particular part of your flesh.
I'm sure you've had this experience.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Rob, Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe I've noticed it more
with campfires of course, where you know you're hanging out
by the campfire and well there's suddenly you know your
feet are heating up a little bit too much, and
then yeah, you go and cool off, and then pretty
soon you're chili and you have to move back next
to the fire. I did not have a fireplace in
(07:00):
my home, so I only get to enjoy them when
I'm like staying in a cabin or something, you know,
maybe at a hotel or a restaurant that has them.
But even then it's it's often kind of fleeting, so
you don't you don't get that like long term exposure
factor with one of these fires. And if I am
encountering a fire, it's often not going to be the
kind of roaring hearth that we're talking about, you know,
(07:21):
historically here, it might be one of these more these
tamer like gas powered features that we have today, which
are great to look at, do put off some heat,
but not on the level that we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Also, rarely these days in an American building is it
going to be the only source of heat. A lot
of times you'll have the you know, the central heat running,
forced air heating, and then also you have a supplemental
fire in the fireplace because it's nice, not because it's
the only way to heat the house.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, we do it as a more than more often
than not, as a luxury on top of whatever we're
doing to heat the place.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Right, So, when you got a big fire in the
fireplace and it's your only source of it can be
uncomfortable to be too far away from it and uncomfortable
to be too close because you're getting you're getting roasted
with a really big fire. Also, I've read you know,
the glare of the light can sometimes be uncomfortable to
look at, depending on how bright it is and other
conditions in the room. One thing I read mentioned in
(08:18):
a few sources was that another function of various screens
and guards of different kinds covering a fireplace, especially going
back into the Middle Ages, one function of these various
types of coverings, especially the tighter coverings, was to block
cold air drafts when the fireplace was not in use.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah. So, so two things I want to say on
what you just shared. First of all, in terms of
the glare, I think this is something that it's easy
to overlook as a non like regular fireplace user, is
since the fireplace becomes a special treat. Yeah, we think, like,
like I was thinking, like, why would you look at
anything else? Like you have the fireplace, look at it.
(08:57):
But in general it makes sense that, yeah, around it
all the time, you have other things you might want
to do. You may wish to socialize more directly with
the people around you, or read a book or work
on a craft, and the light might be too intense
for that. You might want to focus your eyes on
something else. Other than the fire, and in this reminded
me a little bit of the There's a scene in
(09:20):
the recent Nonseratu adaptation where we meet count Overlock more
officially in this big room that has a roaring fire,
and it's fabulously at the same time both really dim
and dark and also like blinding. So I feel like
that scene maybe gets that some of the paradoxical realities
(09:41):
of a hearth lit and hearth heated room, I think so. Yeah,
and then the empty hearth is another important factor, one
that I think is also easy to forget about if
you don't have a fireplace, or if you have a
modern fireplace that can maybe be s up a little
bit easier when it's not in use. But yeah, this
(10:02):
idea that it is a potentially drafty affair in and
of itself, and so you might want to block access
to the wind to some degree, cut down on the
airflow or even the sight of the empty fireplace, which
I know is another factor involved here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Secondary purpose for fire screens, especially certain forms of them.
We'll get into different forms as we go along, but
the wider paneled forms sitting closer to the floor were
often used to cover up what was considered the unsightly
and depressing image of an empty fireplace when there was
(10:43):
not a fire burning in it. So a nice decorative
fire screen would hide the sooty hollow and replace it
with a nice design or at least a neutral surface.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
This I understand now that it's pointed out to me,
because the fireplaces that I have grown up around at
different times, they were often not in use. When they
were not in use, sometimes things it would like they'd
be like maybe some sort of a popoury kind of
a little thing placed in there to sort of, yeah,
tend to make it a little more comfortable and less
look less empty, and maybe make you less sad about
(11:16):
the fact that we can't use the fireplace right now
because it's July, right.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So, fire screens are functional. They do have a purpose.
They were invented to allow you to heat a room
with a large, hot fire, but shield the people sitting
next to the fire from the most intense direct radiant
heat and glare from the blaze. Fire screens, depending on
how they're defined, sometimes people make a distinction between the
(11:42):
terms fire screen and fire guard. Things that are I
think more often called fire guards would have the benefit
as well of blocking sudden ejections from the fire, like
sparks and embers. But if you think about that, you know,
some of these fire screens we're going to talk about
it made a very delicate flammable material and so they
(12:03):
probably you wouldn't want to use them for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
But yeah, this sort clearly they were not intended to
catch any sparks or flaming logs that might come falling
out of the fireplace.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But you know, as we've probably all seen around a
lot of fireplaces, there might be a metal mesh or
wire or some kind of metal and glass design, and
these are more in the fire guard zone. These would
not only provide some shielding from the most intense radiant
heat and the glare, they would also prevent anything from
(12:35):
being ejected through. You know, they would be a stopper there.
But in addition to these functional uses, fire screens were
also decorative so catch them in this book mentions that
in eighteenth century American examples quote the panels displayed fine
needlework or later paintings, often made by the women of
the house, as well as prints or various fabrics, And
(12:59):
if you look up examples of eighteenth century American fire screens.
I guess that's probably what you would have been seeing
in the house you visited, Rob. Many of them are
absolutely beautiful, beautiful, elaborate designs. I just wanted to mention
one that caught my eye when I was just image
searching for these things, I found images of a screen
(13:19):
hosted on a blog post for the Winterthur Museum in
Delaware by a student named Tess Friedman. This image, Rob,
I've got for you to look at in the outline.
It's of what's called a pole screen. I'll explain that
more in a minute. A pole screen that was made
in New York between seventeen sixty and seventeen seventy five
(13:41):
with a mahogany base. The screen is a linen canvas
with an elaborate hand embroidered image made out of yarn
and silk, and it looks basically like a framed painting
on a rectangular canvas attached to a pole on a
wooden tripod, except, of course, it's not a painting. It's
an embroidery design. The embroidered image on the canvas depicts
(14:03):
a shepherdess and a shepherd out in this pastoral scene
with sheep roaming the hills beside a city, and the
male shepherd is kneeling in front of the shepherdess. He's
got his hand over his heart, looks he looks like
he's asking for her attention or something. Maybe maybe he's
asking her to marry him, and she seems to be
kind of considering the offer or whatever it is. And
(14:25):
I think, what's so captivating to me about this piece
of furniture is imagining this beautiful, delicate work of art,
delicate both in construction and even in subject matter, being
used as the shield from a roaring fire. But again,
this contradiction is somewhat not a contradiction when you understand
(14:46):
how these different types of fire shield furniture were used.
There are actually lots of different designs for fire screens
and fireguards. Some are wide and positioned on the floor
closer to the fire to provide general protection to the
room or to the seating area around the hearth. Others,
(15:07):
like this fire screen would be positioned usually closer to
the person, with a targeted blocking radius, kind of like
a little parasol for the fireplace, And these are often
said to serve the purpose of shielding a person's face
rather than their whole body. This form again is often
called the pole screen, and you can find a lot
(15:29):
of examples like this that are a pole, a wooden pole,
or a metal pole coming up off of a round
or tripod base on the floor and then it's holding
maybe a round or a rectangular screen of some kind,
often with a beautiful design on it. And this type
of furniture again would not be placed right next to
(15:50):
the fire. Instead, you should picture it maybe at the
edge of a couch where a lady was resting, and
the screen would be between next to the lady's head
between her in the fire. Now I also mentioned that
the pole screen, the smaller pole screen, is not the
only design in contrast to these smaller elevated screens. Ketchum
says that in the early nineteenth century, the cheval design
(16:13):
became more popular in American homes. It was not invented
at this time, but it became more popular in America
around then. The cheval design, named after the French word
for horse, is a wide rectangular panel mounted load to
the floor on two pairs of short legs, So it
is kind of like a little you know, picture a
little sawhorse, but instead of a cross beam. It's a
(16:36):
big rectangular panel or screen.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And these often really have a you really get a
sense of please don't look at the fireplace with these. Yeah,
it's almost like like, pay no attention to what is
behind the beautiful parrot decorated work of art.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Right, Or here's an angel with a bunch of blooming
flowers all around her, and then behind her is the blaze.
Ketchum finally says that fire screens began to fade out
of use and become less common as modern forms of
domestic heating takeover in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now, one thing that I picked up on during my
tour in New Orleans was this idea that people of
the time might want to avoid looking into the fire
for some reason or another, and it was compared to
staring at a television too much or something. I was
rather intrigued by that idea, I have to say, though
(17:31):
I did not have much luck in finding any specific
Victorian notion of this situation where there was some sort
of an idea that it was bad luck or thought
bad for the eyes, especially to gaze into the fire.
At the same time, again acknowledging that there was a
(17:51):
need to shield yourself from the heat and or glare
of the fire. But I was expecting that maybe there
might be something out there of a tradition where it
was you know, bad luck or bad manners or bad
health to do so. But I don't know. It seems
based on what I was finding, that there's little in
the way of cultural opposition to steering at a fire
(18:13):
in general for human beings outside of some very specific
cultural examples. Certainly nothing with a wide enough footprint in
European and then American traditions of the time as far
as I can tell. That being said, however, as we
discussed in the Hearth episodes, there all these rich ideas
(18:34):
of the heart is some sort of a supernatural pathway
through which things might enter the home. There's plenty of
room for a tradition like that to emerge, even if
it's very local, and you know, particularly if you're thinking
of a place like New Orleans, where you have all
these different cultures coming together and different ideas merging with
each other. So I'm not going to completely rule out
the possibility, but I wasn't able to find much on it.
(18:56):
What you will find, however, is an idea that these
screens were important to keep the cosmetics of Victorian women
from melting, essentially from their face melting off when they
were hit with the intense heat of a fireplace, and
therefore you would need to have a screen in place,
(19:18):
either handheld or on a pole to protect them. This,
as far as I can tell, so this is widely
discredited as a myth. But at the same time, it
seems like this is maybe more on the exaggeration end
of the myth spectrum. So as we've been discussing, like
there were practical reasons to want to keep the heat
(19:40):
off of your face and the glare of the fireplace
out of your eyes. Could it mess up your makeup?
I don't know, maybe not, but it doesn't seem to be.
You know, the prime reason for this, I think where
it becomes a myth is when people say, oh, well
they had that because ladies had wax based cosmetics and
they didn't want the melt. Not the prime leading reason
(20:04):
as far as I can tell. Now, I want to
briefly mention another tradition just because I feel like it
helps us maybe understand like some of the broad strokes
of this sort of technology, The idea of placing some
sort of a screen between you and a heat source
or between the heat source and other parts of your environment.
(20:26):
And in that we have what is known in Japanese
as a biobu, and I maybe butchering that pronunciation now
byaba in general is just a folding screen, often decorated
with calligraphy or other images. These eventually found their way
into European and American homes as well during the eighteenth
(20:48):
century and then beyond. It led to a tradition in
Mexico as well of a screen tradition that was inspired
by it. And the word literally means protect action from
the wind or wind wall in Japanese. And so you
might use this to break up a space or indeed
to sort of like prevent a draft from moving all
(21:10):
the way through a living environment. But then you also
have a frosaki biago or furnace wind screen, and this
is also decorative, sometimes a fine work of art, but
it is specifically used to protect the furo or portable
tea brasier from drafts that might blow on the coals
(21:32):
and scatter the ashes and disrupt the tea ceremony that
you're conducting with this little portable, little portable stove. The
stove would have used charcoal, it would have provided the
specific heat needed for the creation of proper macha tea.
So it's one of these things that is again highly ceremonial,
(21:53):
highly esthetic, but the at least original idea in its
design is Okay, if you're going to have some sort
of a heat source, a burning heat source, you might
need to prevent the wind from catching it because this
could at the very least disrupt things, get some ash
where you don't want some ash, or it could potentially
serve as a fire hazard. Again, easy to take all
(22:17):
this for granted because central heating in a home, like
your airflow is part of the way your home is heated. Like,
it's all built into the system. This problem has been
solved for you, and you don't have to worry as
much about that air circulation and how it relates to
your heat and your heat sources.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah, one of the many pieces of modern domestic technology
that we often just take for granted. We forget to
even appreciate that it's there. Yeah, all right, are you
ready to talk about fuel sources?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, let's get into the fuel sources, because this is
another thing that I just didn't think about at all
when I was making you snap judgments about fire screens
as I was touring that house.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Right, so forewarning that I'm going to begin this with
a question that I was not in the time preparing
for today's episode able to find a conclusive answer to.
I'm only going to get halfway there, but I did
uncover some interesting things along the way, so please bear
with me as we go along. But what I wanted
to talk about was a distinction between coal fires and
(23:28):
wood fires, because when we in America think of a
fire and a fireplace today, I bet almost everybody thinks
of a wood fire where the fuel is split wedges
of seasoned hardwood. But there are other sources of fuel,
of course, and at other times and places in history,
they might be more common in domestic fires, not just
(23:50):
in say, a coal furnace or a coal stove, but
even in open hearth fireplaces in the home. And a
big alternative here is coal. If you were to go
look in the fireplace of, for example, a middle class
or working class home in London in the eighteenth or
nineteenth century, the fire in the fireplace would almost certainly
(24:12):
be a coal fire and not a wood fire. Now,
this doesn't hold true everywhere around the world. In fact,
it wouldn't hold true even everywhere in Britain at the time.
If you went out into the countryside, you'd probably still
find a lot of houses burning wood, But in the
city coal would be the go to fuel source for
cooking and heating in most homes.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah. For a seasonally appropriate literary example of this, in
A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is something of a coal miser,
and much is often made of this in adaptations like
I grew up watching Disney's A Christmas Carol, and I
included a screenshot here for you, Jove. I haven't seen
this in a while, but you can see Mickey Mouse's
cratch it holding up a single piece of coal. You cold,
(24:59):
it has not been lit. He wants to put it
in the stove, and Scrooge is giving him a hard
time about it, like, now, you're you're going to put
us out of business if you've used one piece of coal. Yeah,
I had to look up any mention of coal in
the original literary work. I'm going to read a passage
here the door of Scrooge's counting house was open that
he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, in
(25:21):
a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank, was
copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked
like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge
kept the coal box in his own room, and so
surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the
master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.
(25:42):
Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried
to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not
being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You're a mean one, missed Scrooge.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, so yeah, coal cole, it's right in our face.
You know, ours probably one of, if not the most
famous example of their snapshot of Victorian urban living. And yeah,
the coal is right there, front and center.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
That's right. So there were basic economic reasons for this
preference for coal. Coal has a higher energy density and
thus is more cost effective to transport across great distances.
So if you live in a deforested area or an
area where there was never any access to wood, this
(26:30):
would certainly include a lot of cities. In the industrial age,
both wood and coal would have to travel a great
distance to get to your home, and coal burns hotter
and longer, so you're typically going to get a lot
more bang for your buck buying coal than buying wood.
You know, if you're shipping wood somewhere, you have huge
(26:50):
amount of what you're shipping is just unburnable stuff in
the way to the wood, water and air and stuff
trapped in there. So coal is a much more or
energy dense and valuable product by weight. Of course, out
in the country, if there's still trees nearby it, it
probably makes economic sense to burn wood, whether you're gathering
(27:11):
it yourself from around your house or buying it from
somebody nearby. However, even many rural homes in Britain I
think by the nineteenth century had made the switch to
coal when it became available by rail lines, because it
was just a cheaper source of heat to acquire. Now,
the urban coal dominance trend has not held true everywhere
(27:33):
and at every time in history. It's not just like
once you live in a densely populated urban environment you
switch from wood to coal. From what I've been reading,
it seems like in big cities in America in the
nineteenth century, you'd find kind of a mix of coal
fired homes and wood fired homes. There were some of each,
and around the world you would have all kinds of
(27:53):
different pressures acting on what fuel source people used, different
local economic pressures, what types of material were available, what
forms of transportation for material were available. Climate, Oh, not
just the availability of wood and coal, but like what
types of wood and what types of coal, because that
makes a big difference. The coal often used in London
(28:16):
in the you know, the seventeenth through the nineteenth century,
would have been what they called sea coal, which was
a bituminous coal, a kind of nasty coal. And there
were even taste and cultural preferences about what types of
fuel to use, and these could rule the day. I
came across this thing of I'd never heard about this before,
(28:36):
but French writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in
particular talking about the use of coal fire in London
as just so gross. I dug up it. And there
was an eighteenth century book called a Tour to London
or New Observations on England and its Inhabitants, published by
(28:59):
Lockyer David seventeen seventy two by an author named Pierre
Jean Grossly. Grossly was an eighteenth century French magistrate and author,
kind of a travel writer.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Of his day.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
He wrote about Italy as well, but he wrote about
his travels in England, including a lot of amusing and
often unflattering views of London. And he really thought the
use of domestic coal fire made the city disgusting and miserable.
There's even a passage about how it made all the
food taste bad. I want to read this quote all
(29:31):
that grow in the country about London. Cabbage, radishes and
spinach being impregnated with the smoke of coal which fills
the atmosphere of that town have a very disagreeable taste
which they communicate to the meat wherewith they have been boiled.
I ate nothing good of this sort in London, but
some asparagus, which doubtless grew at a good distance from
(29:52):
the capitol.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And then after this, Grossly has some more general notes.
He says, quote the smoke of sea coal fires with
which the atmosphere of London is generally filled may be
reckoned amongst the physical causes of the melancholy of its inhabitants.
The terrestrial and mineral particles with which that smoke is impregnated,
insinuate themselves into the blood of those who are always
(30:15):
inhaling them, render it dull and heavy, and carry with
them the new principles of melancholy. Oh wow, So not
the only time people complained about pre modern London is
for being polluted. But I don't know, I found this
an especially evocative and targeted attack on the use of
coal in the city.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. I mean, it's like he's saying, this is just
a problem of culture here at large. It's not just
that everything but the asparagus tastes bad. It's just like
it has made everybody miserable and sad.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah. So there are different economic pressures in different preferences
about domestic fuel sources at different times and places throughout history,
and of course that's changed again in the modern era.
You know, in modern homes, so that with modern forms
of heating like gas or electric furnaces or heat pumps
and houses like this, when you still have a fireplace,
(31:13):
it's usually a supplemental esthetic heat source. Of course, there
will be counterexamples to this. Some homes still really need
the fireplace heat. But a lot of you know, a
lot of houses with fireplaces now don't really need them
for heating. They're just a nice thing to have. And
in those cases, it seems a lot of people prefer
wood for these optional fires, at least most people in
(31:35):
America do. I wonder if there's anywhere people actually have
an esthetic preference for coal fires. It seems kind of
unlikely to me, but I'd be interested to be surprised.
I would like to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I guess one of the things about coal fires, when
you get into the technology of like Victorian era technology especially,
is that hot coals could then easily be transported out
of a primary fire into very like smaller stoves and
heated devices, you know. Yea, So it does have that
going for it.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That's right. Yeah, And the ease of transporting you know,
a shovelful of hot coals again, I guess that's probably
down to the energy density of coal compared to that
of wood.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah. Yeah, less running around indoors with flaming sticks as well.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah. But anyway, so this brings me to differences between
coal and wood as a fireplace fuel. A coal fire
will typically produce a more consistent supply of strong radiant
heat than a wood fire. From what I've read, it's
normal for a wood fire to maybe be hotter right
(32:41):
at the beginning is that's really blazing up. But then
as the wood begins to burn down, it rapidly cools
off and produces less heat over time, needing more tending
and replenishment. A coal fire is going to get you
a hot stream of radiant heat going, and it'll keep
going for a long time. And so I was reading
about this, and it made me wonder, is it possible
(33:04):
fire screens or fireguards were more needed in homes that
burned one type of fuel instead of the other. For example,
because coal puts out a steadier, longer lasting stream of
strong radiant heat. Would a coal fire be more likely
to become uncomfortable without a guard of some kind for
the face or the skin? And you know, basically, does
(33:27):
a coal fire more resemble a broiler aimed at the
people by the hearth side? The answer, unfortunately, is I
don't know for sure. I was looking and couldn't find
direct historical confirmation of this idea, but given the differences
between the heat produced by wood versus coal fires, it
seems to be plausible that there might be a kind
(33:48):
of different experience around a coal fire than a wood fire,
and that experience might manifest in a stronger desire to
put screens between yourself and the blaze. So yeah, if
any listeners out there have more experience it's with this
kind of thing and would like to comment on this issue,
I'd be interested to read your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, any field reports would be greatly appreciate.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Okay, Rob, if you're up for another Victorian side I
wanted to mention an interesting video I came across from
the UK National Archives called The Victorian Fireside, hosted by
a specialist with their collections named Olivia Gayjagg, and I
thought this was interesting because Gaychag makes a point in
(34:38):
this video to emphasize the cultural meaning of the fireside
for middle class homes in Victorian Britain. So this is
getting into how fire screens figured into you know, not
just fire screens, but fire screens and lots of associated
furnishings and technology. Things around the fireplace are not just
functional in nature, but they mean something within the cultural context,
(35:02):
and this is exploring that, certainly within Victorian Britain. So
in Victorian Britain during the wintertime, she talks about how
the hearth side was kind of a standard gathering place
for household activities. By the fire, you'd sit and talk,
you'd play games, you might eat meals. And in these
middle class Victorian homes, the hearth was usually the center
(35:24):
of the drawing room or the parlor, which was the
part of the house that arguably carried the most social
and cultural meaning. Basically, all people at all times in
some ways express who they are through the design and
decoration of their homes, but obviously to different extents and
in different ways. And I understand the argument here to
(35:45):
be that the Victorian drawing room or parlor was an
area of particular focus for expressing the homeliness of a
home in Victorian Britain. In gaych Egg's words quote, a
comfortable and well furnished drawing room became symbolic of some
of the key notions of Victorian morality. And this was
(36:07):
in one sense an inward facing message as a place
the family could gather and do things that expressed their
bonds as a family, you know, so they would kind
of understand themselves through this space. But it was also
an outward facing message as the place that would message
to guests and visitors things about the family's identity, including
(36:27):
everything from economic class and status to esthetic taste and
moral values, and so these things that would communicate those
ideas included a lot of furnishings and decorations related to
the fireplace and its immediate surroundings. And fire screens are
a great example here. You could think also of all
(36:48):
kind you know, coal buckets that you would restock the
coal fire with, and you know metal fire guards, but
also fire screens, fire screens with the embroidery or other
designs on cloth. On these pole screens we've talked about,
these would often be a way for the female head
of the household to express her taste, her skill if
(37:10):
she made the design herself, which was often the case,
and moral virtues. And gay Jag highlights one particular design
for a pole screen, that is, it's on a pole
with a tripod at the base, like the other one
I was talking about earlier, but this one has baby
fire breathing dragons made out of iron on the three
studs of the tripod base. Nice and then it comes
(37:33):
up to a very actually quite small fire screen it looks,
you know, just small enough to block the face from
the fire, which has a circular embroidered design and then
an elaborate frame around it. But this video really makes
the distinction, for one thing, between fire screens like pole
(37:53):
screens and the heartier things that would more often be
called fire guards, citing these brass based samples. No doubt
these things would get very hot sitting right in front
of the fire, but those would provide more solid protection
against sparks or other material ejections from the fire, because again,
you know of a pole screen like this that's a
(38:13):
linen canvas or embroidered cloth or something something made out
of wood, these would obviously be highly flammable, so they
would not be something designed to go right up against
the fire. They would get scorched. So if you're talking
about a fire screen that goes right up against the fire,
you're going to be talking about different kinds of materials.
But anyway, the main point being made in this video
(38:35):
that I thought was worth noting was that at least
within the Victorian middle class household in Britain, the fireplace
and its immediate surroundings and furnishings are just a big
part of how a domestic unit expressed and understood who
they were. And so these decorated fire screens were not
just functional. They carried a lot of meaning and it
had people's identities kind of poured into them.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, And as is often the case with these sorts
of things, sometimes the aesthetics completely dwarf any functionality that
it might have had, and you can see this in
some of the more elaborate designs. One that really caught
my eyes. This is one that you'll find various antiques
listed with varying degrees of context and information. I found
(39:20):
a Victorian fireplace screen on mossinfog dot com and I've
included a picture of it here for you, Joe. It
is made apparently with real taxidermide and hummingbirds, like seemingly
dozens of them, and I cannot tell. I couldn't tell
from the description or from certainly from the pictures whether
(39:42):
there is a white screen involved here because it's shot
against a white background, or if this is just open,
if it's just like little artificial branches with a bunch
of stuffed hummingbirds on them. In either case, this seems
very much like the sort of fire screen that would
maybe be in front of an inactive fireplace, or if
(40:03):
it were in front of a live fireplace, it would
be positioned good ways out. Otherwise you're just going to
roast your poor little taxidermy hummingbirds, and or it's going
to shine right through it.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah, that's the other point. If this is in fact
open and not a solid screen, that's not going to
be blocking a lot of heat, and certainly the taxidermy birds,
I'm sure with scorch. Yeah. So yeah, I wonder about
the usage here. I wonder if there were fire screens
that were where the function in blocking the intense heat
(40:36):
from the fire was not really a consideration, and there
were some that were just decorative. They're just there to
cover up a fire screen that's not currently or cover
up a fire that's not currently in use, or just
there to i don't know, position farther away and kind
of have something nice to look at the fire through.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, And I definitely found it just a terrific example
of this and an older source. I was reading Representative
metal Work by Cora Lynn Daniels and this was published
in the Decorator and Furniture eighteen eighty five. So we
can look this up. I pulled it up on jay Store,
and the paper here describes some elaborate antique fireplace elements,
(41:20):
including a salamander decorated grate, so talking about the mythic
salamander little reptilian creatures that were said to live and
emerge or be born from burning logs. And it also
highlights a fire screen that is made out of antique brass,
(41:40):
jewels and glass, which itself was set before a hearth
that also featured bits of colored glass placed before the fire,
but behind the fire screen. So the idea here would
apparently be you'd have these pieces of colored glass that
are catching the light of the roaring fire, and essentially
(42:00):
it's like you have a it's almost like a concert
light display in your home. It sounds pretty splendid. Trippy,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, trippy. It's like some sort of
a trippy light effect that you might purchase nowadays. Here's
what the article says. Quote set before the gleaming glass
coals which shone through this gorgeous screen and one hundred
(42:23):
changeful hues, nothing could be imagined more effective to light
one corner or side of a room done in deep,
warm shade of brown crimson or maroon, or to supply
a glow of color to an apartment finished in snowy
white and gilt, although the effect of the former would
be somewhat more artistic to our thinking, it.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Seems kind of like a nineteenth century equivalent of a
I don't know, lava lamp or a star projector or
something a light based curiosity.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah. Yeah, And you can tell from the illustration didn't
include a photo obviously, but an illustration of what has
looked like, and you get the sense of almost like
a piece of stained glass that was positioned in front
of the fireplace. Yeah. So at a basic level, you
can imagine that these screens are about just manipulating light
in the room. I have to read. There's another snippet
(43:13):
from this that I just found amusing though, where they're
just talking about how the popularity of various antiques and
maybe the dubious historical notes associated with them. The author writes,
to those who have a craze for the antique or
a rage for genuine old wares, it might be a
beneficent lesson to examine this modern work so superior in beauty, richness,
(43:37):
and finish to most of the things which quote came
over on the Mayflower. The author then goes on to
jestingly speculate just how many governor's chairs and tables the
Mayflower must have contained if all of the claims of
authenticity were correct.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Nice, but in general, I didn't even know that was
a common thing people say their furniture was on the Mayflower.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Or may I don't know. I was not aware of
this either. Maybe it was a thing around eighteen eighty
five where everyone claimed to have had antique furniture that
came over on the Mayflower, or something to that effect.
I think they're just basically saying, like most of a
lot of the stuff that out there is claiming to
be super old, maybe isn't as old. But at the
(44:22):
very least, I love the idea of this particular hearth
that the author is describing here, with its salamanders, with
its pieces of colored glass, and then this rich ornate
screen that goes in front of the fire that I
don't know. I may be just blowing it out of
proportion in my mind, but I'm just imagining a sitting
(44:43):
room lit up like a disco, and it's pretty fabulous.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I would roller skatee in that drawing. Room. That sounds cool, But.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
It also sounds like the sort of innovation you might
employ again in an environment where a fireplace is not
a special occasion thing but something that you use all
the time during certain seasons, and therefore there would be
more of an effort to improve upon it and spruce
it up with all these varying ideas, Whereas I mean,
for many of us now, like if you get to
(45:12):
fire up the fireplace, that is the treat in and
of itself, and you are not thinking about, well, what
kind of colored lights can I throw into the scenario, But.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
If you need it for heat every night, you might
be thinking like, can I get some more TV channels
on this?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yes? Yeah, how do I get satellite on this hearth?
All right?
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Does that do it for fire screens?
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I think so? Yeah. So we present this again as
essentially kind of an episode linked sidebar for our discussion
of the heart that is now being featured involved episodes
hearing the stuff to blow your mind feed But we'd
love to hear from everyone out there, Folks with fireplaces,
Folks with fireplaces in their past traditions than their culture
(45:52):
right in, we'd love to hear from you. Maybe you
can help us understand some of these lingering questions we have.
In the meantime, we'll just remind you of this. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes
on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Sent huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
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Robert Lamb
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