ART DECO INTERIORS

ART DECO INTERIORS Decoration and Design Classics of the 1920s and 1930s By the timeof the great Paris Exhibition of 1925, the idea that an interior and itsfurnishing should form a complete design - a 'total look' - dominated thethinking of both designers and their sophisticated clients. In the later1920s and 1930s, whole studios were established, notably in France and theUnited States, to serve the needs of a design- and style-conscious middleclass intent on showing off its newly refined taste for things modern andexotic: the richly lacquered screen, the tubular steel chair, the vividgeometric carpet. Art Deco Interiors documents this flourishing of design ingenuitythrough contemporary photographs and illustrations of selected interiorsjuxtaposed with modern photographs of individual pieces. It traces thestylistic evolution and dominant motifs of 'Deco'; the triumph of the 1925exhibition and the pure,'high style' of the leading Paris ensembliers; thetremendous growth of jazzy, Streamline Moderne offshoots in the UnitedStates; the international revival of Deco as a decorative style for a newgeneration of post-modern designers; and the restoration of many Art Decointeriors to their original glory.