Neoclassical Brass Coffee Table with Clear Glass Shelf by Maison Jansen, circa 1940

This gilt brass coffee table with a clear glass shelf is an exemplary realisation of Maison Jansen's neoclassical style in the 1940s. The brass structure, of sober and architectural elegance, deploys the house's characteristic vocabulary — tapered legs, geometric stretcher, turned profiles — while the clear glass shelf brings lightness and transparency, allowing the eye to travel freely across the metallic structure in all its precision. The clarity of the glass enters into dialogue with the warm sheen of the patinated brass, creating a visual balance of great refinement.

Glass-topped coffee tables constitute one of the most accomplished furniture types in the Jansen production, combining functionality and aesthetics. By substituting transparent glass for eglomised mirror or lacquer, the house here chooses to highlight the intrinsic beauty of the metal structure, aligning itself with a certain modernist vision of furniture in which honesty of materials is a cardinal value. This aesthetic choice gives the piece a surprisingly enduring modernity.

This coffee table presents in fine overall condition. It will integrate naturally into a classical or contemporary drawing room — as a central table before a sofa or as an occasional table — bringing the prestige of a mythical name in French design without sacrificing the visual lightness that only glass can provide.