Over the last few years Art Deco has become fashionable and original items much sought after. Surprisingly perhaps, today most Art Deco work appears as fresh and modern, even ultra-modern sometimes, as it did sixty years ago or more.

This was the style that took its name from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an exhibition held in Paris in 1925, although even before the First World War avant garde designers were producing one-off pieces that would be later classified as Art Deco.

In the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco was the style of the times and its designers had worldwide influence. It touched almost every facet of life from architecture to advertising posters, luxury liners to lamps, furniture to fashion.

Art Deco buildings are still much admired and actively preserved in places as far apart as New Zealan and New York and prices rise steadily for Art Deco pieces of all kinds.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is holding an important exhibition of Art Deco illustrating how it was a worldwide phenomenon and this new book, Art Deco 1910-1939 is the principle exhibition publication. It brings together nearly 40 essays from leading experts in the field including Paul Atterbury, well known as a BBC Antiques Roadshow expert, Rafael Cardosa, Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro, Wendy Kaplan, Department Head and Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Christopher Menz, Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

The essays are divided in to sections. After an introduction to Art Deco, the next section explores the sources and iconography of the style including influences from Egypt, Mexico, Africa and East Asia. The third section deals with the 1925 Paris Exhibition and the fourth with the spread of the style throughout Europe and into many different facets of design. The last section traces the spread of Art Deco even further afield into the Americas, India and beyond.

This is the definitive book on Art Deco. If you collect it or just love it, you must get this book with its wide-ranging and scholarly but readable essays on the most influential style of the 20th century. The book is also beautifully illustrated with pictures of objects and buildings showing every facet of Art Deco design from all over the world.

Quick Facts
Title: Art Deco 1910-1939

Editors - Tim Benton, Charlotte Benton & Ghislaine Wood

Publisher: V&A Publications

ISBN: 1851773878

Binding: Hardback

Publication Date: March 2003

Number of Pages: 464

Price: £40

All information relates to the UK edition.

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