Chrome and Glass Coffee Table with Arched Cross-Braces

The chrome and glass coffee table is one of the defining furniture types of the French modernist interior: light, transparent, and uncompromisingly of its time. This example, dating to circa 1960, exemplifies the form at its most accomplished — a rectangular plate of clear glass resting on a precisely engineered chrome frame that draws the eye as much as the surface it supports.

Beneath the glass, the structural logic of the table is made visible and decorative: two curved, arch-shaped cross-braces sweep from corner to corner, meeting at a central junction and creating a graphic pattern of intersecting curves that animates the underside of the table. The legs extend from the corners of this framework at a slight angle, lending the piece a sense of dynamic lightness rather than static weight. All elements are finished in polished chrome, which maintains its reflective clarity even after six decades.

This kind of rigorous, elegant table-making was characteristic of the Parisian furniture workshops of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were producing pieces that responded to the influence of Italian and American modernism while retaining a distinctly French sense of proportion and craft. The result here is a table that is simultaneously functional and sculptural.

A superb centrepiece for a living room or salon, easily paired with seating from the same period or as a statement piece in a more eclectic interior.