Autumn 2016


All That Jazz ALL THAT JAZZ


The riotous Roaring Twenties and the depression-ridden 1930s saw a tidal wave of creativity, as a look was formed that would define the era. That look was art deco, which Homes & Antiques finds is still much admired today


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un, escapism and optimism – never were these attributes better captured in design than in the period between the two world wars, which has


come to be known as the art deco era. Having just left behind the horrors of the First


World War, the populations of Europe and America were ready to dance, party and forget, to listen to jazz music and throw themselves into ‘cocktails and laugh- ter’ as Noel Coward put it. ‘It was, to a large extent, the first style of a new age,’ says author, broadcaster and art deco specialist Eric Knowles. ‘People were keen to embrace a fresh beginning, having suffered through the war. They were now more aware of the outside world by way of the cinema, and the glamorisation of Hollywood. And they had more freedom. For the bright young things of the 1920s, these were the Roar- ing Twenties. The dances were the Charleston and the tango – they’d seen nothing like that before – and the hemlines were up high.’ What emerged was a creative outpouring with a


buoyant spirit that stretched from art deco’s birthplace in Paris to cities around the world from Casablanca to Havana, and reached its zenith in those temples to progress that created the blueprint for the modern city: the skyscrapers of New York. Even as dark shad- ows began to fall across Europe, the movement was un- stoppable, adopting the sleek lines and metal sheen of the fast-developing aeronautical industry and embrac- ing the glamour and escapism of Hollywood. ‘It encom- passed everything in lots of ways,’ says Knowles. ‘It was a style that people dressed for and it was in the archi- tecture of the age, certainly in America… You only have to see a skyscraper to imagine people dressed in the fashion. People wanted to emulate their idols from the silver screen – whether they were a New York socialite or a Lancashire milkmaid.’


The world stage The term ‘art deco’ was adopted in the 1960s, to de- note the design style represented at the 1925 Paris ‘Ex- position des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes’. The idea of the exhibition had been to put on a grand


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international fair that would restore France’s pride in its decorative arts and reassert is pre-eminence on the world stage. In contrast to the Exposition Universelle of 1900, which had celebrated past glories, this exhibi- tion would look to the future and showcase new ideas. Countries from around the world were invited to exhib- it their most cutting-edge designs. Among the highlights of the French exhibits was the


Hotel du Collectionneur, a pavilion designed by archi- tect Pierre Patout and fitted out by leading French de- signers with furniture by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, lacquerwares by Jean Dunand and glass by René


Images: Katya de Grunwald; Words: Dominique Corlett


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