The mantel of honor
WHEN pioneers came West they brought everything, so the saying goes, except the kitchen sink.
But they left their mantelpieces behind too.
“When I first came here to California in 1976, there was very little in the way of fireplace mantels,” says Bill Riegert. “Builders here didn’t seem to want to put them in, or even know what they were. So I said, ‘I’ll fill that void.’ And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”
For the last 28 years, in other words, Riegert has been carving unusual mantelpieces to frame the fireplaces of Southern California. He’ll carve anything into them -- dolphins, birds, seashells, family crests, life-size dogs, horses, your initials, even you.
It’s not so much that the climate requires fireplaces, he admits. It’s that a lot of people living here come from the Midwest or the Northeast, and they’re just used to having a fire and a mantelpiece.
“This is oak,” he says. He’s standing beside one of his most ambitious mantelpieces, with snorting horses charging full tilt out of the wood from both sides. “This I’d work on for several months.”
That piece will set you back $50,000, but it’s top of the line. You can get charming 5-foot mantels made of poplar for $350. Or a ‘50s-looking beaded mantel with cloverleaf columns for around $4,000. A mantel featuring two clowns straining to hold up a wonderfully modern three-level mantelpiece that looks like passing clouds goes for $5,500.
Riegert’s method is the opposite of mass production. For starters, designing mantelpieces can be awkward. “The funny thing about fireplaces is they’re all idiosyncratic. A large percentage have a problem. They have a window too close, or the brick is funny or the ceiling is [too high], and you’ve got to make a mantel that will fit each individual situation.”
So Riegert will come to your place, listen to what you like, the kind of mantel you’re thinking of. You may have a definite idea; many of his customers request things such as Bible quotations, personal poetry or names carved into the wood.
Or often, people ask him to carve in a family crest. “I had one with three bears on it, and some deer and even a duck on the top,” he says.
But more likely, people aren’t sure what they want. “Then I’ll make suggestions, I’ll make a sketch. Or maybe I’ll see an arch, something on their wallpaper, the way their windows are, the doors, colors. And if they’re open to a good design -- and most of the time they are -- then I’ll make something that I’ve designed for them.”
One set of clients, a couple from Rancho Santa Fe, had a house bounding with dogs. “So I said, ‘What if you did a mantel and had full-size dogs [supporting it] on either side?’ So I carved one dog who was looking in the fireplace, the other sitting there just enjoying the fire.”
These days, Riegert always has half a dozen mantels in various stages of completion at his studio in Valley Center, north of Escondido. It’s a long way from when, as a kid in Minnesota, he took a shine to his architect father’s hobby of woodcarving. “My dad specialized in lighting fixtures for cathedrals and banks. He worked in metal, but he always had a fascination with wood. We had this lake place. One day, when I was a kid, 12, 13, he was carving on the mantel. And he said, ‘Come here. Carve these.’ He had drawn on some grapes.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how.’ But he said, ‘Just start trying.’ So I did it. And I was fascinated by it. He said, ‘You know, you do pretty well.’ I didn’t know it at the time but that was going to be my lifelong interest.”
Years passed. Riegert went on to earn a degree in history and political science, but he says, “I wanted to be an artist, though not a starving artist. I went back to the lake and talked with my dad, and he said, ‘Why don’t you start your own business?’ So I did, in a garage, making furniture. Almost immediately I started getting orders for mantels.”
Carving mantels really took off when he moved to “mantel-free” California. “I love to carve,” he says. “And I think of mantels as being art. You’ve got to be able to think on your feet, to sketch. Just repeating some old woodcarving is not going to do it. You’ve got to be able to invent.”
He works in a 3,000-square-foot studio in rural Valley Center. “I usually turn up about 8:30, 9 in the morning, decide which pieces I’ll work on that day, put on some Vangelis or jazz or Sarah Brightman, and start,” he says.
He does it all by hand, from his sketches, and unless he needs help with heavy lifting, he works alone. The studio sits on two acres of land, so he doesn’t have to worry about neighbors complaining if he sings along with Sarah.
The actual carving, with his cherished Marples chisels and perhaps a lignum vitae wooden mallet, is the part he loves best; mahogany is the wood he most likes to carve. But it can be anything from oak to maple to poplar or cherry.
But why this fixation on mantels? It’s the idea that has always moved Riegert: the hearth, this ancient gathering place where the elemental fire makes you safe from wolves and the night. Nowadays, it’s still the symbolic center of the house, the family locus, a repository of significant moments -- birthdays, passings, holidays -- a place where the patriarch or matriarch can rest an elbow, lift a glass, make a little speech and propose a toast.
“Significant moments happen at my mantels. It’s a good feeling,” he says.