Glass-Top Console Table in Lacquered Aluminium & Gilt Metal, Pierre Vandel, France circa 1970

Pierre Vandel occupies a distinctive place in the history of French luxury furniture: a Parisian house that, from the late 1960s through the 1980s, produced pieces of exceptional refinement by combining lacquered aluminium or brass with gilded hardware and glass, creating work that synthesised the neoclassical tradition with the sleek modernism of its era. This console table is a characteristic and handsome example of the firm’s output.

The frame, constructed from dark lacquered aluminium, features fluted legs whose vertical channelling introduces a note of classical rigour into an otherwise resolutely modern composition. The four legs terminate in distinctive square gilt-metal capitals where they meet the horizontal framing members — a detail that recurs in Vandel’s œuvre and serves as one of the house’s defining signatures. The whole is crowned with a clear glass slab that allows the elegant substructure to be read in its entirety.

Vandel’s work appealed to a wealthy Parisian and international clientele that sought furniture with both decorative presence and contemporary relevance — pieces that would hold their own in apartments furnished with antiques as well as in rigorously modern interiors. This console, with its balance of dark metal and bright gold accents, epitomises that ambition.

Signed Pierre Vandel. In good vintage condition overall, the lacquer and gilt metal retaining their original character. The glass top is present and intact.