'Essential Art Deco' captures the essence of the style which swept across the globe in the 1920s and 1930s, altering the skyline of cities from Shanghai to Rio, and adding an exotic vibrant edge to everything from cinema and fashion to ocean lines and automobiles.
Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book explores the extraordinary visual language of the style. Skillful juxtaposition of source material and iconic Deco pieces shows how designers borrowed from the exotic cultures of Ancient Egypt, Meso-America, the oriental East and Africa and from the man-made world of skyscrapers and machines, developing in the process a new and highly distinctive iconography.
Images inspired by the natural world of plants and animals, sunbursts and fountains, contrast with the geometric forms of avant-garde painting and design, culminating eventually in the symbolic idiom of streamlining. Deeply eclectic and highly decorative, Art Deco was all about fantasy, fun and glamour m- themes that are celebrated in the attractive book and which still strike a popular chord today.
