Brass Art Déco Coffee Table with Clear Glass and Black Lacquer Border, Maison Jansen, France, circa 1940

This refined coffee table presents a rectangular polished brass frame supporting a clear glass top set within a border of black lacquer, creating a bold chromatic and material interplay characteristic of French Art Déco at its most sophisticated. The palette — warm gold, cool transparent glass, and matte black — is precisely the combination that the greatest Parisian decorating houses of the 1930s exploited to achieve interiors of maximum visual refinement. The clean, architecturally precise lines of the piece speak to the austere elegance that Maison Jansen brought to their finest Art Déco productions.

Maison Jansen, founded in 1880 on the Rue Royale in Paris, was by the 1930s the most celebrated interior decorating house in the world, working for royalty, heads of state, and the most distinguished private collectors across three continents. Their Art Déco furniture — produced in the finest ateliers to the most demanding standards — represented a distillation of the French tradition of excellence in the decorative arts. Coffee tables combining brass, glass, and lacquer in the manner of this piece were among the most characteristic productions of the Jansen workshops during the decade, destined for the finest drawing rooms of the international élite.

In excellent original condition, the brass retains its warm golden patina, the black lacquer its deep and pristine finish, and the clear glass its original clarity. The compact rectangular format — 81 × 43 cm in plan and 42.5 cm in height — makes this an elegant and practical coffee table for a drawing room, study, or library. A distinguished example of the Jansen Art Déco production, combining three of the period’s most prestigious materials in a composition of singular clarity.