Art Deco. Just mention it and images of sleek ocean liners, peopled by impossibly beautiful characters wearing Cartier jewels and sipping Manhattan cocktails spring to mind. Or maybe it’s the futuristic styling of Max Sterm’s Metropolis or even the gaudy delights of the Odeon cinema – those streamlined and chrome-plated ‘peoples’ palaces’ that brought Hollywood glamour to the depression-ravaged masses of the 1930s. Art Deco emerged as a style for the new century and an ever-changing, fast-paced world of motor cars, air travel, flappers, and syncopated jazz. It’s the style of the Chrysler building, the Ziegfeld Follies and, as it happens, Victoria Coach Station; an intoxicating mix that continues to beguile us as much as it did in the Roaring Twenties.
Has there ever been a style more luxurious, glamorous, more imitated and, perhaps, less understood? Let’s start with the name. ‘Art Deco’ was actually only first coined in the late 1960s as a sort of two-hander to Art Nouveau which had preceded it. Also, far from being a single recognisable style, there were, in fact, many different strands, depending on when and where it popped up. Italy, Sweden and, of course, America all had their own particular ‘takes’ on it. But nowhere did the style emerge more coherently than in France where it was known as Moderne. Of course, the French have a long and proud history in the decorative arts – they virtually invented the idiom – but, more than any other, it was the Moderne look that truly encapsulated le style Francais.
For those on a Moderne mission, Paris is, of course, a mere hop and skip over the channel but for a taste of the style that’s a little closer to home, I normally reach for the cocktail shaker. If Paris was the spiritual home of Art Deco, then the cocktail was its tipple of choice and designers rose to the challenge of creating bar accessories that were every bit as exciting as the people who drank them. Art Deco cocktail shakers are now highly collectable and style conscious collectors will often pay over £1,000 for a rare example. Cheers!
