Art Déco Faux-Bamboo Brass Tripartite Coffee Table with Glass Tops, in the Style of Maison Baguès, France, circa 1940

A tripartite faux-bamboo coffee table in patinated brass of refined Art Déco character, comprising three joined sections each furnished with two tiers of clear glass that allow the bamboo-simulating brasswork to be appreciated beneath the table’s surfaces. The legs and structural members are worked in imitation of bamboo — the knotted joints and slender culms rendered with characteristic precision in polished brass — a treatment that situates this piece firmly within the tradition of the finest French decorative metalwork of the 1930s and 1940s. The tripartite structure, unusual and highly distinctive, allows the table to serve as a single extended piece or to be separated for alternative placements.

Maison Baguès, the legendary Parisian bronzier and decorator, was celebrated above all for its mastery of the faux-bamboo idiom in brass and gilt metal, which it applied to furniture, lighting, and decorative objects of the highest quality for an international clientele that included the grandest European residences and royal palaces. Tables in this manner — their structural members carefully worked to simulate the nodes and sections of bamboo — represent one of the most recognisable contributions of the French luxury ateliers to the decorative vocabulary of the mid-twentieth century. This example, executed in the characteristic Baguès idiom with its three-part structure and two-tier glass surfaces, is an accomplished specimen of this distinguished tradition.

In good condition consistent with age, the brass presenting a warm patina and the glass tops intact and clear. Minor wear commensurate with eight decades of use. A table of considerable decorative ambition and distinctive form, suited to a drawing room of character or any interior seeking a piece that combines the exotic with the classical.