Pair of Brass Andirons with Sculptural Flame Uprights. France. Circa 1920.

These andirons present a tour-de-force of the brass-founder’s art, each upright cast as a freely modelled flame rising with organic élan from a scrolled foot. The silhouette — billowing, tapering, and curling at its apex — captures perfectly the volatile energy of fire translated into enduring metal, conferring upon each piece an almost living, animated quality.

The flame motif enjoyed particular favour among French decorative arts of the neoclassical tradition, where fire held both symbolic and ornamental resonance. These examples, dateable to around 1920, inhabit the transitional moment when neoclassical propriety was beginning to yield to the freer, more sculptural impulses of the emerging Art Déco movement, resulting in uprights of exceptional graphic power and vitality.

Cast in polished brass with a warm golden patina, the flame uprights are mounted on iron log dogs of practical length, ensuring that the pair serves the hearth as well as it adorns it. The purposeful contrast between the lustrous brass and the darkened iron recalls the finest traditions of French metalwork, where utility and beauty were regarded as inseparable virtues.

This pair would form a striking focal point for any period fireplace surround, their sculptural presence equally persuasive in a neoclassical salon, an Art Déco interior, or against the clean lines of a contemporary setting.