Art Deco

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Paris, 1901, the Société des Artistes Décorateurs has just been founded by a group of artists, after the recent event of the Universal Exposition in Paris just one year earlier. Beginning as a direct response to the exponential interest in the fine and applied arts within France, the future of design over the coming century would be ushered in at lightning speed.

^{Epstein, an Art Deco Epstein walnut cocktail cabinet, c.1930 (£300-500)}

Created to indulge the demands and evolving tastes of the prosperous urban bourgeoisie for high-quality craftmanship, the society presented at some of the first Paris salons and were a way for them to innovate with new standards for production in France. Through the early 1900s and 1910s, designers such as Hector Guimard and Louis Majorelle would pioneer the Art Nouveau style across France and parts of northern Europe, however it was a short-lived affair and by the 1920s a turning point came. A modern style was to be the way forward at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925, where the term ‘Art Deco’ would originate (although only appearing retrospectively in print in 1966 for an exhibition on the subject).

^{Royal Worcester, a pair of Art Deco bookends modelled as polar bears (£400-600)}

Francis Jourdain, the son of Belgian architect Frantz Jourdain, created an entirely new and fresh look for a section of the exposition, envisioned as a smoking and physical culture room, with smooth wood walls and a ceiling that was comparable to riveted sheets of metal; a far cry from the opulent aesthetic of Art Nouveau. Unlike many of the other exhibits, Jourdain did not wish to highlight luxury living, instead he stripped away the ornamentation of Art Nouveau and reduced a lot of elements down to their key forms. There were pavilions from various French department stores such as Galeries Lafayette and Bon Marché as well as exhibitors from as far afield as the Soviet Union and Japan. Le Corbusier even unveiled his pavilion for ‘L’Esprit Nouveau’ which would be an era defining look in the field of architecture. The pavilion was hidden between two wings of the Grand Palais and the organisers were appalled by its appearance. Corbusier also displayed his ‘Plan Voison’ within the building which would have seen the proposed construction of several 200-meter-tall skyscrapers across Paris, replacing the existing older Haussmannian buildings.

^{Attributed to Oliver Hill (1886-1968), an Art Deco 'Zebra' rug, c. 1930s (£5,000-7,000)}

This new stylistic approach would set the tone for Art Deco and its intentions. Redefining new ways of working with pre-existing techniques and materials was something Art Deco managed to do successfully, most notably through glass in the form of René Lalique. Lalique viewed glass as a form of sculpture and used techniques such as pâte-de-verre, an ancient glass making technique use to mould ground glass. He would also carve shapes into life-like forms and stylised organisms from the natural world such as flowers, animals and the human body into minimal works of decorative art. 

2025 marks the centenary of the exposition and the inception of ‘Art Deco’ as we know and understand it today. Art Deco not only changed the visual landscape of art and design, it also changed the accessibility the general public had to objects. More mass-produced pieces were created across various disciplines, Lalique created car bonnet ornaments and lifestyle objects you could have in your own home, Coco Chanel had a perfume bottle that was in constant demand, Peter Behrens was looking at products in pewter and silver and Clarice Cliff was paving the way in porcelain with her hand painted ‘Bizarre’ objects. The 1920s and 30s really were the beginning of modern life as we know it today and enriched how we lived and beyond.

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Wednesday 30 April | 10am

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