Art Deco Design
Art Deco, perhaps unlike its preceding art and design movements, Arts and Crafts, or Art Nouveau, has become less rooted in its historical moment, and, having reached ‘timeless’ status, is regarded as a ‘style’ that remains ripe for contemporary pick-and-mixing. Emerging from Paris, Arts décoratifs evolved into a loose term, becoming synonymous in popular culture in Europe and the States with early 20th-century decadence, glamour, and the invention of modern luxury as an aesthetic. Art Deco style is easily conjured up in the mind’s eye of even those uninitiated in the history of design; the gleaming turrets of the Chrysler building, the glitz of The Great Gatsby, or the Vogue illustrations of flapper-esque models.
Art Deco has never lost its prevalence but lately, there has been a resurgence in demand for Art Deco pieces in the home, and this year, a series of articles in Vogue or The New York Review of Architecture, for example, noted a cultural shift towards a renewed appreciation, and a move towards new ways of using Art Deco accents in the home.
There are many ways that you can draw on the richly crafted, opulent spirit of Art Deco without committing to a full, faithful look. Here are some of our favourite Art Deco reference points, to help spark new ways to incorporate Art Deco style into your home space.
1 Sonia Delaunay
Often described as the mother of Art Deco abstraction, Sonia Delaunay started her foray into what became a trademark for vibrantly modern geometric textiles with a commission for fifty fabric designs in 1923. Delaunay’s Boutique Simultané launched swiftly after, and is now credited as a seminal turning point for avante-garde, Art Deco-era fashion, which sought to integrate bold, abstract visuals into everyday life and create wearable art. Her summer parasol was on our moodboard when we were developing our Axis pattern, which mixes a sunny lemon yellow with contrasting black and white grid-like lines to create a splash of Art Deco lighting in the home.
2 Jean Dunand
Responsible for the popularising of lacquer in the West after working with Japanese artist Seizo Sugawara, Jean Dunand is widely regarded as one of the great craftsmen of the Art Deco period. We especially like his decorative screens, such as Les Cagnas, in the permanent collection at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The home screen underwent innovation in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, evolving from something functional into a new medium for creative expression and blurring the line between fine art and home furnishing. Adding a hand-painted object or piece of furniture is a subtle nod to the artist-interior designers of the early twentieth century, and here at Palefire Studio, you can make this an even more personal expression with our bespoke lighting, available on request.
3 Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray’s early works landed somewhere in the middle of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, though she was quite fastidiously untethered to any specific movement or style, and is quoted as saying “I think I’ve always hated deco’. For us, Gray represents the unbounded inventiveness of early modernism, and particularly in her approach to statement lighting. Her 1927 tube light using tubular steel is like an art installation decades ahead of its time, and proves the potential for home lighting to stand alone as art pieces in their own right.