Art Deco

About

Art Deco took its name decades later from the 1925 Paris exhibition of decorative and industrial arts, but its look was forming before the First World War. French furniture makers led the luxury end: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann built elegant cabinets in macassar ebony inlaid with ivory, Jean Dunand worked in layered lacquer, and André Groult covered pieces in shagreen, a sharkskin or rayskin leather.

The style borrowed freely from Cubist faceting, ancient Egyptian and Mesoamerican motifs, Ballets Russes colour and machine forms. Look for stepped outlines, sunbursts, chevrons, stylised fountains and gazelles, and polished contrasts of chrome, black lacquer and pale wood. In New York it shaped skyscrapers such as William Van Alen's Chrysler Building (1928–30), and Tamara de Lempicka gave painting its glossy, sculpted figures. In the 1930s industrial designers such as Walter Dorwin Teague and Raymond Loewy pushed the style towards Streamline Moderne, rounding radios, cameras and locomotives.