Modernist Brushed Steel and Brass Fireplace Companion Set, French circa 1970

An exceptional modernist fireplace companion set in brushed steel and brass, combining sculptural imagination with practical function in a manner characteristic of the most forward-thinking French decorative design of the 1970s. The set comprises five tools—shovel, poker, tongs, brush, and broom—suspended within a cage-form stand of slender vertical steel rods, the whole rising to over 82 centimetres from a broad circular ring base. A small brass finial crowns the composition, providing the sole warm note against the cool satin-grey steel.

The cage-form stand is the defining element of this design: a geometric cylinder of steel rods that serves simultaneously as tool holder, display stand, and sculptural object. This approach—using pure structure as ornament, without applied decoration—is characteristic of the independent French design ateliers of the late 1960s and 1970s, when creators were producing fireplace accessories that owed as much to Minimalist sculpture as to traditional metalwork.

Brushed or satin-finished steel, rather than polished or lacquered metal, was the material of choice for the most design-conscious French interior accessories of the period, offering a visual texture of quiet sophistication suited to the neutral, high-contrast interiors fashionable at the time. The combination of brushed steel with a brass accent echoes the palette of the best contemporary French furniture design of the 1970s, the era of Maison Jansen’s later work and the Mobilier National’s most ambitious commissions.

In good condition consistent with age, the steel retaining its brushed finish and the brass finial its warm lustre. A rare and distinguished piece of 1970s French design-object metalwork.