THE ENDURING APPEAL OF ART DECO - WHY DOES ART DECO FURNITURE APPEAL A CENTURY AFTER IT'S BIRTH

 Art Deco remains one of the most popular styles of Vintage Glassware furniture on the marketplace for collectors and people searching for an intriguing centrepiece for their home.

WHAT IS ART DECO?

Art Deco design dates back to the 1920s and 1930s, sprouting from the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th and early 20th Century, and becoming the predominant style of the era. The name Art Deco comes from a French expression meaning decorative art but wasn’t coined to describe the era’s style until the 1960s.

Easily recognisable by precise and bold geometric shapes and vibrant colours, Art Deco design was used readily in architecture, fashion, transport, Edwardian Furniture design and household objects, such as lights and lampstands.

Art Deco brings to mind the roaring 20s, the era of prohibition and speakeasies, Jazz in Paris and Berlin cabaret nightclubs before the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression of the early 1930s. As well as Art Nouveau, Art Deco bears similarities to Modernism and Bauhaus but remains enough unique features to be easily distinguishable from other period pieces.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ART DECO FURNITURE

Art Deco furniture is crafted from exotic woods, such as ebony, zebrawood and rosewood, with inlays of other types of wood and then finished with Japanese lacquer to provide a smooth, glossy look and feel. Decorative embellishments are added with geometric designs such as starbursts, sunshine rays, zigzags and straight-edged floral patterns. In addition, inlays using ivory or mother of pearl were often added to provide a further flourish to sideboards, dressers and dining tables.

Animal hides, stainless steel, serpent skin upholstery and veneered or lacquered wood are features of Art Deco era seating, particularly lounge and armchairs.

Most Art Deco Cheap Vintage Furniture pieces were not generally designed with mass production; however, stylistically, the movement celebrates machine production, simplicity, modernity, geometry and symmetry. One of the guiding principles behind the Art Deco movement was that the practical use of the piece should not replace its elegance and beauty. This was one of the reasons why expensive and precious materials such as gold, ivory and crystal were so widely used.

ART DECO OBJECTS

The Art Deco movement was as prevalent in functional household objects as in the era’s furniture. For example, Bakelite became the first synthetic plastic and gained popularity during the 1920s and 30s as the primary material in the production of Bakelite radios. The use of mass-produced synthetic plastics did not suddenly mean compromising style. Bakelite radios remain highly collectable for people desiring a genuine piece of Gatsby-era Americana, with the snakeskin patterns, geometric patterns, lines and symmetry all providing the basis of design for the radios.

As with the furniture, although the use of Bakelite meant that it was highly durable, heat resistant and not prone to scratching, the elegance and beauty of the pieces continued to exceed the functionality. The same can be said of timepieces of the Art Deco era, where clock faces are enclosed within stunning, luxurious pieces that catch the eye far more than the need to tell the time might require. Other objects, such as vases, mirrors, lamps and book ends, and non-functional, such as figurines and sculptures, continue to hark back to the bygone era of Art Deco wealth, luxury and indulgence.