Two-Tier Brass and Glass Coffee Table by Roche Bobois, French Work, Circa 1970

A sleek two-tier coffee table in polished brass with glass shelves, produced by the celebrated French furniture house Roche Bobois circa 1970. The design exemplifies the modernist approach to the coffee table that characterised the most sophisticated French interiors of the period: a geometric brass framework of tubular or bar-form members at precise right angles, supporting two strata of glass that lend the whole an airy transparency. The combination of polished brass and clear glass was particularly fashionable in the late 1960s and early 1970s, projecting an image of luxury, modernity, and cosmopolitan refinement.

Roche Bobois was founded in 1960 by the Roche and Chouchan families, merging a Parisian furniture heritage with international manufacturing expertise. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the brand became synonymous with a certain vision of contemporary French lifestyle, furnishing the apartments of the Parisian bourgeoisie with furniture that was simultaneously design-conscious, high-quality, and reflective of the era's appetite for bold geometric forms in metal and glass. The company collaborated with prominent designers and produced collections that set the tone for modern French interiors.

This Roche Bobois coffee table, with its two tiers of clear glass and gleaming brass structure, is a handsome example of French bourgeois modernism at its most assured. It would integrate with equal elegance into a period 1970s interior and into a sophisticated contemporary space, its clean lines and warm metallic tones having long transcended the decade of their creation.