Round Brass Coffee Table with Black Lacquered Glass Top by Maison Jansen, French Work, circa 1940

This exceptional round coffee table, with its brass structure and dramatically lacquered black glass top, is a masterwork of Maison Jansen's neoclassical design vocabulary as it was refined during the most creative decades of the house's history. Jansen — founded in Paris in 1880 by Henri Samuel Jansen and brought to global prominence under the direction of Stéphane Boudin — occupied a unique position in the international decorative arts world, supplying the most distinguished residences and palaces of Europe and beyond with furniture and objects of unmatched refinement.

The design of this table is a study in Jansen's characteristic ability to balance opposing qualities: the warm, gilded brightness of the brass structure stands in dramatic counterpoint to the cool depth of the black lacquered glass top, creating a chromatic tension that is both visually striking and intellectually resolved. The circular form — one of the most pleasing and versatile silhouettes for a low table — is handled with the precise proportional control that distinguishes Jansen's finest work from mere imitation.

Coffee tables of this typology — round, brass-framed, with lacquered glass tops — became emblematic of the Jansen aesthetic in the 1930s and 1940s, and surviving examples in good condition are eagerly sought by collectors and decorators worldwide. The black glass version is among the most dramatic and desirable of the variants, its chromatic boldness making it a natural centrepiece for the most ambitious interiors.