Maison Jansen

This elegant pair of side tables with scalloped edges trimmed in coral lacquer are supported by curving legs that meet the floor with ornate, gilded sabots. Each table is stamped JANSEN and numbered 15541 and 15542 respectively.

For the better part of a century, Maison Jansen was a major force in French design and decor. The firm’s work was celebrated at every defining show of the early 20th century, from the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the 1925 Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Pairs, and New York’s World’s Fair in 1938. Thereafter, its offices executed some of the most elegant post-war interiors across four continents—those of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, C. Z. Guest, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis, to name but a few.

Provenance:
In 1965 Maison Jansen decorated a Paris apartment in the 8th arrondissement, and when the clients retired to Nice they took the furnishings with them.

Bibliography:
James Archer Abbott, Jansen, Acanthus Press publisher, New York, 2006. Similar occasional table in the small library of King Leopold III and Princess Lilian of Belgium, in Domaine d’Argenteuil in Ohain Belgium, entirely decorated by Maison Jansen in 1959, shown page 199.