About Art Deco Furniture
Art Deco fantasy characterized the 20 years of innovative design that separated the late 19th century naturalist S-curves of art nouveau from the functional technicality of 20th century modernists. After the first World War (1914-1919), Western Europe was economically devastated and culturally shocked. A mood of escapism in France opened consumer taste to futuristic design that mimicked the rounded shapes and polished metal surfaces of finely machined industrial dynamos and aircraft. In the 1920s and 1930s, art deco introduced chevrons, stair-stepped forms, rounded corners, plywood, chrome, glass and modular or sectional pieces in furniture design.
World's Fair
The term art deco was first used for a 1966 retrospective at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, but the style of art deco debuted at a fair in Paris in 1925. Paris's World's Fairs had large design budgets. The Eiffel Tower was built for France's centennial exposition, a World's Fair in 1889. For the 1900 fair, the first Metro was rushed into operation and Art Nouveau was the official design theme. However, the 1915 Paris World's Fair was rescheduled to San Francisco instead, because of war. In 1925, as soon as possible after the war, Paris held L'Exposition Internationale de Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (The International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Art). The introduction of Art Deco at this fair was a celebration of a new era with a new, 20th century aesthetic.
Form Follows Function
Just after the 1900 World's Fair, a circle of Paris architects and interior designers formed the Societe des Artistes Decorateurs. The art deco genre emerged from the work of these professionals. Art deco furniture was closely associated with the expensive products of the Paris women's high fashion industry. Ebony veneers, sharkskin or snakeskin upholstery, heavy lacquer, ivory and chrome plating were adapted to express the influences of Cubism, Surrealism, the newly discovered Egyptian tombs, African folk art, and the Mayan, Chinese and Japanese artwork popular in Paris at the time. Heavy, gaudy 19th century Victorian decoration was abandoned in favor of the 20th century dictum that "form follows function." Lines were simple. Colors were bright.
French Designers
Jean Dunand designed in the art nouveau genre in his early career, but was a pioneer of art deco. His factory's black lacquered screens, cabinets and tables accented with silver and gold birds and flowers were borrowed from Oriental traditions, but with simpler hardware and leg designs, and materials that were European. Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann introduced the first modular storage units as specialty designs for specific interiors and manufactured them at his family's factory. Jean-Michael Frank designed a "Mae West" lips couch influenced by Salvador Dali's statement that the mouth is an aesthetic form, but his usual couches were statements of simplicity and practicality. Eileen Gray, an Irish designer working in Paris, specialized in bright colored fabrics and chrome.
American Designers
Art deco influenced American interiors and design in the 1930s, where it was best used on a grand scale in public spaces, such as theaters and skyscraper lobbies. American art deco designer Donald Deskey created the interior spaces and furniture for Radio City Music Hall at the Rockefeller Center in New York. A typical Deskey couch used very simple, rectangular leather cushions on a set of curving chromed metal supports. His table designs combined irregular shaped, thin wooden tops on tapering chrome legs. His chest-of-drawer designs were unadorned rich wood, with rounded corners and black trim. At his "Skyscraper Furniture" factory, Paul Frankl introduced modular pieces that suggested the New York skyline. Gilbert Rohde, a son of a Bronx cabinet maker, designed chrome and glass furniture for several manufacturers. Rohde introduced the curving sectional sofa.
What Came Next
The 1925 Paris exposition also featured a pavilion designed by Le Corbusier, who became the most modern of the modernist designers. Unlike art deco, modernist design had a political agenda as well as a design aesthetic focused on bringing modern furniture to the working class. The apex application of art deco interiors and furniture were in the luxurious trans-Atlantic cruise ships intended only for the enjoyment of the wealthy. In contrast, Le Corbusier designed square concrete buildings for workers apartments. By the 1950s, modernist furniture designers such as Americans Charles and Ray Eames filled those apartments with affordable, mass-produced, body-contoured furniture in bent plywood, wire mesh and fiberglass.
