Furnace stone
A stove stone is the base of a cast iron box stove . Oven stones were particularly widespread in the 18th century and are often adorned with decorations. In the broadest sense, they are part of folk art .
Cast iron box ovens, as they were common in many areas in southern Germany for a long time, required a stone slab as a base on the floor. The stove was not placed directly on this plate, but on stone feet. In the course of time, up to the Baroque period, the characteristic stove stones with a usually narrower base developed from such simple feet, from which a tapering middle part rises, which ends in volutes or snails. Such furnace stones were especially widespread where suitable local stone was available, and also predominantly among better-off layers who could even afford a cast-iron box furnace.
The stove stones were often decorated by hand and often also painted. The decorations range from simple dates and craftsmen's symbols to allegorical motifs, floral and foliage ornaments, symbols of professions to the coat of arms of the authorities for ovens in offices or aristocratic or alliance coats of arms for ovens in aristocratic houses.
After the box ovens with oven stones had flourished in the 18th century, there was an increasing trend in the 19th century to coal stoves or more compact small standing ovens, and later to heating with electricity, gas and oil. In the course of this development the cast iron box ovens disappeared and with them the oven stones. Some of the ornate stones have been walled up in the masonry of buildings, for example in the house at Finkenbergstrasse 5 in Heilbronn-Biberach , which u. a. is listed because of the bricked stone.