Large Brushed Steel and Brass Coffee Table with Horse Heads, in the Manner of Maison Jansen

Equestrian iconography has been inseparable from the vocabulary of French luxury furniture since the Grand Siècle, when the horse — symbol of aristocratic authority, martial virtue, and the court culture centred on Versailles — found its way into the decorative programmes of the greatest commodes, consoles, and guéridons of the age. Maison Jansen, the supreme executor of the French grand interior across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, brought the equestrian motif into the realm of modernist luxury furniture with a confidence that few houses could match — and this large coffee table, in brushed steel and brass and dating from around 1970, is entirely in the spirit of their most celebrated productions.

The horse-head terminals — three-dimensional castings in bronzed brass — and the hoof-form feet referencing the sabots of the classical console are signatures of the Jansen vocabulary at its most characteristic: an aristocratic symbolism rendered in the cool, industrial materials of the modernist era, creating an arresting contrast between the organic warmth of the equine form and the geometric precision of brushed steel. The combination of the two metals — brushed steel for the main surfaces, warm brass for the sculptural details — produces the kind of multi-tonal richness that distinguishes great metalwork furniture from merely well-made pieces.

At 123 cm long, 65 cm wide, and 50.5 cm tall, the table has the commanding scale of a major salon piece, large enough to dominate a sofa grouping while the horse-head and hoof details transform it from mere furniture into a sculptural statement. Its generous height of 50.5 cm gives it an almost architectural presence, closer to a low console than a conventional coffee table.

In very good condition consistent with its age. A distinctive and rare example of Jansen-inspired luxury metalwork from the 1970s, at the intersection of equestrian tradition and modernist design.