“Mantelpieces have the potency of order,” says Adam Charlap Hyman, cofounder (with Andre Herrero) of American firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero (CH&H). Citing 20th-century greats like Diego Giacometti and Serge Roche, Charlap Hyman points to fire decor as a place where designers can make “an artistic, expressive statement”; the trick, he says, is to use the mantelpiece as a counterweight, an opportunity to either impose a degree of symmetry and hierarchy on a space or to disrupt it with an offbeat accent."