Renaissance

How Did Renaissance Fireplaces Start?

With a chimney company. About 1990, Ray Bonar was a hearth products distributor in western Canada, Doug Singer was vice president of engineering at a chimney maker, and André Bibaud was Singer's second in command. The three decided they could make venting better, and after a year and a half of planning they started Industrial Chimney Company, better known as ICC.^[12] ICC dates its founding to 1991.^[2]

Fireplaces came later. ICC bought the RSF fireplace line and in 2001 moved it from northern British Columbia to Quebec.^[12] Then, in 2008, ICC started designing what it calls prestige fireplaces, and Renaissance was born.^[13] The spark was personal: while Ray Bonar was building his own house, he couldn't find a fireplace that suited it.^[13]

The result was the Renaissance Rumford 1000, first shown at the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association trade show in February 2008.^[14] ICC filed for its patent that same month, naming Bibaud and Louise Cléroux as inventors,^[19] and filed the Renaissance Rumford Fireplace trademark in Canada in January 2008 and in the United States in February.^[18][17] Renaissance's first website, online by August 2008, promised “a romantic open fire with very low emissions.”^[11] The timing was hard, though. Bonar later said ICC introduced the line just as new-home building collapsed, so sales were slow for the first few years.^[12]

What Is a Rumford Fireplace?

It's a fireplace shape that's more than 200 years old. Count Rumford was born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753.^[21] He sided with the British in the American Revolution, was knighted by King George III, and was made a count in Bavaria.^[20] His essay on chimney fireplaces was published in 1796.^[20]

Rumford made fireplaces smaller and shallower, with side walls angled wide open so they'd throw more heat into the room. He also streamlined the throat, the narrow passage where the smoke leaves the firebox, so the smoke would carry away cleanly with little loss of the room's warm air. The result is the tall, shallow fireplace that carries his name. Rumford fireplaces were common from 1796 until about 1850, and Thomas Jefferson had them built at Monticello.^[21][20]

Renaissance builds that shape in steel and refractory instead of brick.^[3] The Rumford 1000's firebox is 27½ inches wide at the front, 13½ inches wide at the back, and 12¾ inches deep.^[3][4] The Rumford 1500's is 35½ inches at the front and 21¾ at the back.^[5] ICC's patent describes side walls set at about 120 degrees to the back wall, an insulated firebox, and a divider in the throat that splits the rising air into smooth front and rear channels.^[19]

How Is a Renaissance Different From an Open Masonry Fireplace?

Start with where the heat goes. The EPA says most traditional open fireplaces lose over 90 percent of the fire's heat up the chimney, and take much of the room's warm air with it.^[16] A Renaissance has a glass door that seals the opening. With the door closed, the fire burns air brought in from outside, so it isn't pulling warm air out of your house.^[3]

Then there's the smoke. The Rumford 1000 was developed to beat the low-emission requirements of a new ASTM test standard for low-mass fireplaces, the kind built in a factory instead of by a mason. It uses a sealed outside air intake, a gasketed glass door, and an insulated chimney, and when the EPA honored it in 2009, the agency said it beat the national emission standards for wood stoves and Washington State's 4.5 grams-per-hour limit.^[14] The EPA's announcement called it the world's first certified clean-burning open fireplace.^[14] Renaissance's own copy puts it as “the world's first certified open-door clean-burning fireplace.”^[4]

The chimney matters too. The Rumford 1000, the Rumford 1500, and the Linear 50 are certified with ICC's Model RIS chimney,^[3] which Renaissance says is laser-welded stainless steel wrapped in blanket insulation, built to keep cold air out and improve the draft.^[3][1]

So what does that mean for you? You still get the sound and smell of a real wood fire. But you get it from a fireplace built to burn far cleaner than an old open hearth, with a door you can close when you want to keep the heat in.

Is a Renaissance Fireplace EPA Certified?

Not certified, and that's by design. The EPA certifies wood stoves and other wood heaters under its wood heater standard.^[15] Under its 2015 rules, a Renaissance counts as a fireplace, not a wood heater, so the certification rules don't apply to it.^{[3][10][6][7]} The Rumford 1000's manual says it's defined as a fireplace mainly for its decorative look, with more than 500 square inches of fire to watch.^[10]

What Renaissance has instead is EPA qualification. From 2009 to 2025, EPA's Burn Wise program ran a voluntary program for cleaner fireplaces,^[15] and Phase 2 qualified models were about 70 percent cleaner than unqualified ones.^[16] EPA's list includes the Rumford 1000 at 3.0 grams per kilogram of wood, the Rumford 1500 at 3.4, and the Uptown 600 at 4.76, with door-closed Rumford versions as low as 0.68.^[15] The Linear 50 isn't on the list.^[15] The EPA itself notes that a qualified fireplace isn't “certified” or “regulated” under its wood heater standard, and it sends you to your state or local air agency for the rules where you live.^[15]

For safety, Renaissance lists its fireplaces to UL 127 and ULC S610.^[3] If your town limits wood burning, ask your dealer and your local air agency before you buy.

Who Owns Renaissance Fireplaces?

Industrial Chimney Company. Renaissance Fireplaces is a division of ICC, and its catalog and manuals give ICC's address in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.^[3][10] The Renaissance Rumford Fireplace trademark and the Renaissance patent are both held by I.C.C. Compagnie de Cheminées Industrielles Inc., at the same Saint-Jérôme address.^{[17][18][19][3]}

As of 2016, ICC was owned by the people who ran it. That year, Hearth & Home reported that the three original partners were still its active owners, that Bonar and Singer shared the CEO duties, and that Bibaud led research and development. Key employees had also been given the chance to become partners, and about a dozen were active in day-to-day operations.^[12]

Renaissance has one sibling fireplace brand: RSF, which ICC bought and moved to Quebec in 2001.^[12][2] The two lines do different jobs. Bonar said he and Singer bought RSF because they liked the idea of a built-in fireplace that burned and heated like a wood stove, while Renaissance models “were never designed to be heating units.”^[12] The RSF story has its own page: RSF.

Where Are Renaissance Fireplaces Made?

In Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. In 2016, Hearth & Home reported that every ICC product was built in its 120,000-square-foot factory and headquarters there, with almost 250 employees.^[12] ICC says today that the plant, after a 30,000-square-foot addition, sits on more than 20 acres, runs around the clock all year, and employs about 200 people.^[2]

The fireplaces are heavy, steel-built units that ship in crates. A Rumford 1000 ships at 720 pounds and a Linear 50 at 1,130.^[3]

What Does Renaissance Make Today?

Four wood-burning fireplaces, and nothing else.^[1] The Rumford 1000 and the larger Rumford 1500 are the true Rumfords, tall and shallow, with door openings 37 and 42 inches high.^[3] Both have a counterweighted glass door and a separate firescreen that slide up into the wall above the fireplace, so you can burn with the door closed, or open the door and listen to the fire behind the screen.^[3]

The Uptown 600 is the smallest, with a 600-square-inch view of the fire. Its door and screen glide on vertical rails and tilt forward for cleaning, and it vents through an 8-inch chimney.^[3][6] The Linear 50 is the wide one, a 50-inch wall of fire.^[3] In 2016, Bonar singled out ICC's new, large linear wood-burning model as a strong seller.^[12] Both the Uptown 600 and the Linear 50 come with a heat recovery system that sends warm air through ducts to grilles in the room, though Renaissance says the Linear 50 isn't designed to be used as a heat source.^[3][7]

Every model can be drilled for an aftermarket gas log set, but none can take a gas log lighter, because the firebox runs too hot for one.^[3] Renaissance says the Rumford 1000 won three Vesta awards in 2008, including Best New Fireplace, a claim we couldn't confirm independently.^[8]

Can I Still Get Parts for an Older Renaissance?

Usually, yes. ICC still builds Renaissance fireplaces in Saint-Jérôme, and dealers order parts by model and serial number. Models change under the same name, so the Rumford 1000's documents cover both the 1000B and the newer 1000C.^[4]

The warranty runs 30 years. In the first year, Renaissance repairs or replaces defective parts and pays reasonable labor. From the second through the fifth year, it covers the parts but not the labor. From the sixth through the thirtieth year, it sells replacement parts, if they're available, at half the published retail price. Glass and andirons are excluded, and the warranty isn't transferable.^[9] Current manuals, exploded parts views, and the warranty are on each model's page on the ICC site.^[4][5]

We found no recall of a Renaissance fireplace when we searched the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada recall databases in November 2026.^[22][23]