chimney-piece

See also: chimney piece and chimneypiece

English

Noun

chimney-piece (plural chimney-pieces)

1. Alternative form of chimneypiece.
   • 1682 July 30, John Evelyn, edited by William Bray, The Diary of John Evelyn: Edited from the Original MSS. [...] In Two Volumes (Universal Classics Library), volume II, New York, N.Y., London: M. Walter Dunne, publisher, published 1901, →OCLC, page 170:

     Went to visit our good neighbor, Mr. Bohun, whose whole house is a cabinet of all elegancies, especially Indian; [...] [A]bove all, his lady's cabinet is adorned on the fret, ceiling, and chimney-piece with Mr. Gibbons's best carving.

   • 1773, [Oliver] Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer: Or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. […], London: […] F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     As you say, we passengers are to be taxed to pay all these fineries. I have often seen a good sideboard, or a marble chimney-piece, though not actually put in the bill, inflame a reckoning confoundedly.

   • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter XVI, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, pages 170–171:

     When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs. Philips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its proprietor, when she had listened to the description of only one of Lady Catherine’s drawing-rooms, and found that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison with the housekeeper’s room.

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 114:

     The chimney-piece was of party-coloured marble, covered with figures, some of whose faces were beautiful, but generally running off into those grotesque combinations which characterised the peculiar taste of their time.

   • 1878, Henry James, chapter VI, in The Europeans‎^[1], Macmillan and Co.:

     The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point. And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries—trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; […]

   • 1905, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter V, in The Merry-Go-Round:

     [...] and the chastest women thought it no shame for their pictures to be exposed in every stationer's shop or to decorate the chimney-piece of a platonic counter-jumper.

   • 1924, E. F. Benson, David of King's:

     "Crabtree's become a—a womanthrope," said Tommers. "No—a misowench. There's not been a fresh photo of ankles on his chimney-piece for months."