Although the art deco movement may have been popular earlier on between the 1920s and 1930s, a lot of interesting things about it were simply not known about art deco interiors. As an example, the term itself was first used in 1925 but it was not yet popular or referred to as such until it was later mentioned in a book on art and interior design in 1968. Around that time, art deco style was simply referred to as ‘modern’.
Mainly characterized by clean, sparse lines which are almost always in combinations of black, white, silver and sometimes red, art deco is a really unique style that is simple all the while elegant, always emanating an aura of opulence. Seeing an art deco interior brings on flashes of mental image of elegant ladies with bee-stung lips slinking past with their long gowns and long cigarette holders- picturesque of the Jazz Age.
Art Deco was more popular in the “Roaring Twenties” where most people could easily become rich and indulging in luxury does not lead to dire consequences. There could be no better word to describe what art deco interiors are about other than luxury. Although any art or design movement hardly exists without its philosophy, art deco with its sleek black-and-white lines heavily emphasises on the aesthetic as opposed to the functional aspect of things.
The art deco interiors rose about the same time the movies began to become popular. As those movies often reflect the lives of rich people, people inevitably desired to make their own house look exactly the same as those they see in the movies.
With the decline of the stock market, people find it hard to afford expensive goods and luxuries anymore. However, when things have been restored after World War II and mass production was introduced, art deco items as well as other items that were once considered a luxury suddenly became affordable to most people to the extent that they become too common and ordinary as Yogi Berri once described the decline of the art deco design, although once in a while, the style is commemorated as the era in which it bloomed was sometimes depicted in a popular medium such as the novel “The Great Gatsby”.
The art deco interior design did not completely die out as there have been continuous (although relatively minimal) efforts to preserve and revive it throughout the ages. Some old buildings with art deco interiors are renovated to keep the style’s legacy up to the years ahead. There are even some art deco train stations that have been turned into art museums to stand as existing testimony to the style’s former glory.
Despite the apparent dissipation of the fame of the style, it did not lose its innate excellent artistry as its application to art deco interiors continually inspires timeless beauty and a complex of modernity and antiquity all in one style.