“Art Deco, although its name is derived from the 1925 Paris International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts (Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes), can be traced back to the first decade of the 20th century, especially to the sharply defined geometric forms of the Sezessionstil. The Bauhaus concern with the use of new materials also had its influence.”
(France Era Co.)
Bauhaus chair
“Also called Style Moderne, the Art Deco movement in the decorative arts and architecture developed into a major style in western Europe and the United States during the 1930s. Art Deco design represented modernism turned into fashion. Its products included both individually crafted luxury items and mass-produced wares, but, in either case, the intention was to create a sleek and anti-traditional elegance that symbolized wealth and sophistication.
Art Deco clock
The distinguishing features of the style are simple, clean shapes, often with a ‘streamlined’ look; ornament that is geometric or stylized from representational forms; and unusually varied, often expensive materials, which frequently include man-made substances (plastics, especially bakelite; vita-glass; and ferro-concrete) in addition to natural ones (jade, silver, ivory, obsidian, chrome, and rock crystal). Though Art Deco objects were rarely mass-produced, the characteristic features of the style reflected admiration for the modernity of the machine and for the inherent design qualities of machine-made objects (e.g., relative simplicity, planarity, symmetry, and unvaried repetition of elements).” (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
The most accomplished art deco designers were French: Louis Majorelle, André Groult, Pierre Chareau, and Jacques Émile Ruhlmann. Their pieces have a streamlined richness that owes as much to superb handcrafting — lustrously finished rare woods with inlays of such exotic materials as ivory in angular, abstract designs — as to their daring geometric shapes. The style was rapidly debased, however, by shoddy mass-produced pieces.
Art Deco References:
- Art Deco Furniture: The French Designers
by Alastair Duncan
- Art Deco Interiors: Decoration and Design Classics of the 1920s and 1930s
by Patricia Bayer
