Three-Panel Modernist Brass and Wire Mesh Folding Fireplace Screen with Rounded Frame. France. Circa 1970.

This three-panel folding fireplace screen represents a quiet and accomplished variant of the mid-century French approach to hearth furnishing. Produced around 1970, it shares the enduring formula of polished brass framing and dark wire mesh that runs through much of the better French decorative metalwork of the postwar period, but distinguishes itself through the treatment of its frame profiles. Where the most strictly neoclassical screens employ sharp rectangular mouldings, this example opts for slightly rounded corner profiles, a small but telling modernist inflection that softens the overall silhouette and gives the piece an easier, more domestic quality.

The three panels hinge together along brass vertical strips, allowing the screen to be deployed in a straight line across a wide fireplace opening or angled inward on each side for a more compact, U-shaped configuration. This flexibility is one of the functional virtues of the folding screen format, which has remained in continuous production since at least the eighteenth century precisely because it adapts so readily to the varying dimensions of different fireplace openings. Each panel is filled with a fine dark wire mesh that provides reliable protection against sparks while permitting the warmth and glow of the fire to permeate the room.

At 54 centimetres wide and nearly 59 centimetres tall, the screen is generously sized for a domestic fireplace while remaining manageable and unintimidating. The polished brass of the frame reads warmly under artificial light, its golden tone compatible with a wide range of decorative schemes. The deep charcoal of the wire mesh grounds the piece visually and ensures that the brass framing reads crisply against it.

In very good condition, retaining its original brass frame and wire mesh. A well-made and versatile screen that serves equally well as a working protective barrier or as a purely decorative hearth presence when the fire is unlit.