There is far more to Art Deco, though, than these familiar and unique building. Art Deco was a reaction against traditional forms and the tumultuous times. It could be luxurious, exotic, or streamlined and modern. It encompassed all aspects of designs, from huge factories down to the handles on a door, using new materials like chromium and Bakelite and the latest tastes from Europe and America.


Others, however, looked to the future and revelled in modernity and the exotic, having houses with streamlined, white exteriors and bold, geometric patterns within, inspired by designs from across the globe and using new materials. It is this latter group of building and objects that, although known at the time by a variety of terms, are today generally bundled together under the title “Art Deco.”


In the late 19th century the design of decorative goods was generally poor and one of the key aims of Arts and Crafts practitioners was to raise the status of craftsmanship to that of the Fine Arts and improve the standard of British goods. Their methods of doing so looked back to a mystical medieval past and a rejection of machine and mass-produced goods. This meant, though, that their products became expensive and rather elitist, falling to liberate the suppressed factory worker as this mainly Socialist-inspired movement had intended. Despite this, the establishment of design schools, their honesty with structures and materials (not trying to disguise a building as something it was not), their new approach to interior design, and their responsibility for all elements from the structure of the building down to the smallest detail of the interior would inspire the following generation in Britain, on the Continent and in America.

At the same time in Europe, the most distinctive form of decorative design was Art Nouveau named after La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, Siegfried Bing’s art gallery, which opened in Paris in 1895). Here, nature was the key theme, with objects featuring twisting plant stems and exotic flowers, which become part of the structure. By the nature of its sinuous forms, Art Nouveau did not lend itself to mass production and many of those who went on to form new groups and associations in the opening decades of the 20th century did so partly as a rejection of this style and traditional teachings but also in an attempt to reconcile the gap between art and industry. It would be this new generation of architects and designers who would be the leading lights of Art Deco.


America had declined to display work at the 1925 Paris Exposition as it did not feel it had art of sufficient originality to meet their criteria. Instead it sent experts to study the exhibits and bring back ideas to boost its own design industry. Here a new style developed, epitomized by NY skyscrapers and the sets on Hollywood musicals. It was termed “Jazz Moderne” and lay somewhere between the exotic and modern. Buildings inspired by the machine, speed and the obsession of industry with streamlining became more dominant in the 1930s.


By using concrete, which could rest upon columns or be cantilevered out, the interior could be freed from the need to have load-bearing walls. Hence, long lines of windows, glass bricks and movable partitions made rooms light and flexible. The use of a flat roof also gave the architect further freedom as it could cover any shape or form of plan whereas a pitched roof put certain restrictions in place in order to support its greater load and because of the limitations on dimensions due to the pitch at which it had to be set.


The most notable change to the house was caused because servants who had been plentiful in the late 19th century were not so hard to find. This shortage meant that most houses were now designed with only a daily maid or cook in mind and no space allowed for live-in staff. As a result, the service rooms had to be more presentable and easier to manage than those in late Victorian houses.