"From grilles and gates to balconies, balustrades, railings, and complex lock-and-key mechanisms, Classic French Wrought Iron is a treasury of architectural ironwork designs providing a concise history of the traditional French ironwork industry and descriptions of forging, assembly, and fabrication techniques. Having systematically walked the streets of every city he visited and recorded its examples of the metalworker's art, author Raymond Lecoq assembled an archive of more than 9,000 images of wrought ironwork. In this comprehensive inventory and classification of superb decorative ironwork, he traces the 700-year evolution of the art in France from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. A classic in the literature, Classic French Wrought Iron is an important book for metalsmiths and designers of decorative wrought iron as well as for architects, interior designers, and craftspeople."--Jacket.