Pair of Wrought Iron Andirons with Foliate and Flame Decoration by Raymond Subes. France. Circa 1940.

Raymond Subes (1891–1970) stands among the most celebrated masters of French ironwork of the twentieth century — an artist whose contribution to the decorative arts placed him alongside the greatest figures of Art Déco and French modernism. Trained under Émile Robert, he directed the metalwork studio of Borderel & Robert for decades, executing major architectural commissions for the ocean liner Normandie, the Palais de Chaillot and countless luxury interiors and public buildings. His decorative objects — of which chenets are among the most personal and refined — are today keenly sought by collectors and institutions worldwide.

This pair, dating to circa 1940, is fully characteristic of Subes' formal vocabulary in the mature period of his career. Each chenet is conceived as a rising plant form: from a base of wide spreading curved legs, the body opens into a boldly worked rosette of elongated forged leaves — their surfaces textured by the hammer, each frond sharp and precisely defined — before resolving at the crest into two entwined tendrils that curl and rise in a flame-like gesture. The design achieves that quality which distinguishes the finest ironwork: a sense of natural vitality locked into geometric precision, the plant motif elevated by the discipline of the forge into something at once organic and architectural.

The execution is superb throughout. The forging is clean and assured, the hammer-texture giving the surfaces a quality of liveliness that no casting could reproduce, and the overall silhouette — with its wide-spreading legs and ascending botanical crown — reads with great authority from a distance while rewarding close inspection with the subtlety of its detail. The wrought iron has developed a rich, even matte black patina consistent with a piece of this period and standing.

A rare and important pair of andirons by one of the true masters of the craft, this is an object of museum quality — a piece that would constitute a significant acquisition for any serious collection of French decorative arts or twentieth-century ironwork.