Shown as part of "Make & Mend", an exhibition at Belsay Hall in Northumberland in affiliation with English Heritage. A response to the surviving fireplaces of Belsay Hall. In rooms emptied of furniture, the remaining hearths continue to orient the space, offering vestiges of previous habitation. The fireguard as a typology sits between utility and ornament. Decorative fragments from the site’s fading wallpapers are transcribed as marks across the piece’s aluminium surfaces. Rather than topical decoration, the markings are chemically eroded into the material through acid etching; a process of controlled deterioration which carries a sense of ephemerality and fragility. In turn, the object acts as an artefact that holds signs of loss in an act of preservation.