Essential Art Deco

256 pp. "Art Deco belongs to a world of luxury and decadence, the apparent GOlden Age of the 1920s and 1930s. It is characterized by a range of exquisitely designed art and craft products as well as gleaming New York skyscrapers and sumptuous Miami villas. Even mundane objects, like vacuum cleaners and Bakelite radios, were given the Deco treatment, adorned with smooth surfaces and sleek lines, and employing the very latest industrial materials and techniques. Art Deco was essentially an eclectic style; its artists and designers plundered a diversity of historical sources. Simultaneously, however, it emphasized modernity - it was this fusion of history and modernity that gave the movement its unique character."