The decorative twenties

This is the first comprehensive record of the decorative applied arts during the period between the Armistice after World War I and the Wall Street crash of 1929. Martin Battersby has provided a penetrating and often highly amusing account of the resurgence of creative design in most of the minor arts. Designers and artists worked again in the idiom of the opulent, decorative luxury of the late Edwardian period when the great designers of the Russian ballet were the arbiters of taste - a nostalgic trend that culminated in The Paris Exhibition of 1925, the first to be devoted entirely to contemporary decorative arts. But in the face of industrialization, social disillusion, growing unemployment and a faster pace of life, this ornate "art deco" mode gave way to the hard chic of the geometrical, streamlined ' new modernism ' that dominated the second half of the decade. Martin Battersby traces the various influences (Cubism, African art, technical innovations) that revolutionized almost every aspect of design: fashion, interior decoration, ceramics, jewelry, decorative painting and sculpture, posters and bookbinding. Glass and furniture of the twenties are discussed in depth, and this material will prove invaluable for collectors. France, as the admitted leader in chic and originality during this period, receives the greater emphasis; but English work, more conservative than the French, is extensively treated. Trends in America, particularly the work of interior decorators and textile designers, are examined as well.