Fireplace Cast Iron Bookends - Mademoiselle

Named Mademoiselle, this pair of cast iron firedogs was never meant to be bookends until Sylvie decided they were. Originally chenets, the iron dogs that held the logs in a French hearth, they take the form of a young woman in a tilted hat with a rose at her collar, the iron darkened and softened by years of fire. French hearths were often fronted with figures like her, a face cast into the iron so there was something to look at while the fire burned down. Sylvie sets them on a shelf with a stack of old books between them, the kind with soft cloth spines and gilt titles.