Black and White Lacquered Modernist Fireplace Companion Set with Cylindrical Stand. France. Circa 1980.

This unusually conceived fireplace companion set belongs firmly to the tradition of French design of the late 1970s and 1980s, when a generation of designers were rethinking the vocabulary of domestic accessories with fresh eyes and a willingness to replace historical ornament with bold geometric form. The result is an object of immediate visual impact: a cylindrical drum in matte black lacquered steel, which contains and displays the four tools of the set — poker, tongs, shovel and brush, each with a contrasting white tip — raised on a wide flat white base from which two curved wing-like fins sweep upward on either side of the cylinder's lower body.

The choice of matte black and white as the sole colours is characteristic of the period's idiom — a palette drawn from the vocabulary of Italian and French minimalism — and the contrast between the hard cylindrical form of the container and the organic sweep of the white base fins introduces a productive tension between geometric rigour and sculptural fluidity. The fins, rising from the circular disc base and curving elegantly to cradle the cylinder above, have an almost architectural quality, recalling the swept buttresses of a modernist building.

The tools themselves — slender, functional, with the restrained quality of well-considered industrial objects — are presented collectively by the cylinder as a group rather than individually on a conventional stand, a solution that is both practical and formally elegant. Seen from above, the four white-tipped handles projecting from the open drum create their own abstract composition.

In fine original condition, the lacquer retaining its depth and sheen, this companion set is an object of genuine design interest — a piece that would make an elegant and historically specific statement in any interior that values the best of late twentieth-century French applied arts.