Curators Choice – The Fire Screen
This fire screen sits in the Drawing Room of Normanby Hall. It was made between about 1810 and 1820 and is one of the few objects on display that are original to the Hall.
When the Sheffield family leased Normanby Hall to the council, and moved to Sutton Park in York in 1964, they took a lot of the original furnishings with them. Other items were sold in an auction on 28 February 1964, including this fire screen. In 2019 the fire screen was again going up for auction. After checking the original 1964 auction catalogue to confirm the provenance, North Lincolnshire Museums successfully bid at the auction and acquired it. After 55 years the fire screen returned to Normanby Hall.
The purpose of the fire screen was to protect the inhabitants of the room from the heat of the fire, as well as any hot sparks. It has a mahogany frame which folds in the centre and is decorated with embroidered silk panels. The embroidery and silk would have been much brighter in colour when it was first made, probably locally.
In this video, Collections Assistant Decorative Arts Madeleine Gray, takes a closer look at the history of the Fire Screen.
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