Modernist Chrome and Black Faux-Leather Waste Paper Basket, French circa 1970

A handsome modernist waste paper basket of clean square form, constructed from a chrome-plated tubular metal frame with panels of black faux leather (skaï) on all four sides. The frame — its tubes precisely mitred at the upper and lower edges and rising as corner posts through the full height of the piece — gives the basket a structural clarity that is immediately legible and entirely in keeping with the rationalist design vocabulary of the 1970s. The polished chrome contrasts sharply with the deep, matte black of the leather panels, creating an effect that is at once graphic and sophisticated.

The skaï panels are fitted tautly within the chrome frame, their smooth surface adding a note of supple materiality to what might otherwise be an entirely hard-edged composition. The overall aesthetic is strongly reminiscent of the black leather and chrome desk accessory tradition associated with such houses as Hermès and with designers of the quality of Jacques Adnet, though this piece, at a more accessible price point, brings the same visual language to the well-appointed bureau without pretension.

At 28 centimetres in each dimension — a perfect cube — the basket is generously proportioned for a desk or home office and sits with the same authority on a study floor as it does beneath a writing table. The geometry of the cube, the economy of materials, and the tonal restraint of black and chrome combine to produce a piece that has aged not at all since the 1970s. French craftwork, circa 1970.