Modernist Glass and Chrome Fireplace Screen with Circular Cutout

A single rectangular panel of clear glass, stabilised by a pair of substantial cylindrical chrome feet, constitutes this boldly reductive modernist fireplace screen. A perfect circular aperture is cut through the upper portion of the glass panel, providing both a functional grip and a formal focal point that articulates the otherwise uninterrupted surface. The chrome feet — solid cylinders with horizontal cross-bars — clamp the lower edge of the glass, their reflective finish providing a strong material contrast with the transparency of the panel.

The design belongs to a current in French decorative arts of the 1960s and 1970s that embraced industrial materials — glass, chrome, steel — as the natural vocabulary of the modern interior. The use of a single unframed glass panel as a fireplace screen, in place of the traditional wire mesh or decorative metalwork, was an assertively modernist choice, one that admitted the visual drama of the fire while maintaining the requisite safety barrier.

The circular cutout, at once handle and ornament, is a characteristic motif of the period’s design language, appearing across furniture, lighting, and accessories as a way of introducing geometric incident into otherwise minimal surfaces. This screen, with its confident reduction to essential elements and its play of transparency against reflective chrome, is a coherent and accomplished example of French design modernism at its most assured.

Dimensions: W. 65 × D. 15 × H. 50 cm.