From Library Journal
This fascinating book surveys the style known as Art Deco and assesses its development, its relationship to other artistic styles and to societal changes, and its popularization through mass production. The authors discuss all the major designers and many minor ones as well. All artistic fields involved in the deco style are discussed: architecture, interior design, advertising, furniture, ceramics, jewelry, and, of course, industrial design. They provide a fairly evenhanded coverage of the impact and manifestations of deco in the United States, England, and Europe. Particularly interesting is their appraisal of the deco revival which began in the 1960s. This beautifully designed book with hundreds of illustrations is highly recommended. Lynell A. Morr, John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art Lib., Sarasota, Fla.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
In the Deco Style unashamedly celebrates the most deliberately elaborate of twentieth-century decorative styles: Art Deco. The sheer diversity and brilliance of the achievements of both interior designers and architects who have contributed to the Deco style are beautifully illustrated in a visual history linked by the commentaries of leading experts from London and New York.
Art Deco developed from a characteristically French image of luxury and refinement. Like Art Nouveau, it was not a totally homogeneous style and a number of design characteristics which came later to be known as 'Deco' were subsequent developments of the essentially French style; most interesting among these was the burgeoning Streamline Moderne in the United States, in which Modernist and Deco elements mingled dramatically.
In its purest forms, however, Art Deco was essentially a pursuit of refinement, often through the use of exotic and unusual materials: rich woods, novel veneers or inlays and lustrous lacquers. Later American designers were also to bring similar elaboration to the use of metal in some of the most notable interiors of thirties New York. Indeed the Deco phenomenon, far from declining after the famous 1925 Paris exhibition, continued through the thirties and forties in America and received the accolade of a revival on both sides of the Atlantic in the early seventies. This is the first book to treat Deco as an ongoing phenomenon, as susceptible to revival and adaptation as all the great decorative styles of the past.
With 346 illustrations, 236 in colour
Art Deco developed from a characteristically French image of luxury and refinement. Like Art Nouveau, it was not a totally homogeneous style and a number of design characteristics which came later to be known as 'Deco' were subsequent developments of the essentially French style; most interesting among these was the burgeoning Streamline Moderne in the United States, in which Modernist and Deco elements mingled dramatically.
In its purest forms, however, Art Deco was essentially a pursuit of refinement, often through the use of exotic and unusual materials: rich woods, novel veneers or inlays and lustrous lacquers. Later American designers were also to bring similar elaboration to the use of metal in some of the most notable interiors of thirties New York. Indeed the Deco phenomenon, far from declining after the famous 1925 Paris exhibition, continued through the thirties and forties in America and received the accolade of a revival on both sides of the Atlantic in the early seventies. This is the first book to treat Deco as an ongoing phenomenon, as susceptible to revival and adaptation as all the great decorative styles of the past.
With 346 illustrations, 236 in colour
