Design Three-Panel Curved Fireplace Screen in Polished Brass and Black Steel Mesh

This striking curved fireplace screen represents one of the most elegant expressions of the French design sensibility of the late 1960s and 1970s, when interior decorators and metalworkers sought to unite functional hearth accessories with sculptural, modernist form. Unlike conventional folding screens, this example is constructed as a gently swept arc of three panels, each covered in a finely woven expanded black steel mesh and framed with polished brass strip, creating a seamless curved silhouette that conforms naturally to the hearth opening.

The combination of polished brass and black steel mesh was among the most fashionable material pairings in French decorative metalwork of the period — warm golden brass and matte graphite mesh providing a visual counterpoint of maximum elegance. The brass framing is rectilinear and unadorned, its clean lines reflecting the influence of the International Style; the mesh panels, by contrast, introduce a subtle play of light and shadow as the firelight filters through their fine interstices.

The three panels are arranged in a continuous curve of approximately ninety-four centimetres in span, with a depth of fifteen-and-a-half centimetres at the deepest point and a height of fifty centimetres — proportions ideally suited to a mid-sized period fireplace. The screen stands unaided on its lower brass rail, its curved form providing inherent structural rigidity without the need for additional feet or supports.

In very good overall condition, the polished brass retains its original warm lustre and the mesh is intact and without deformation. A quietly exceptional piece of 1970s French design, equally suited to its intended function as a fireplace screen and to appreciation as a sculptural decorative object in its own right.