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Descriptive term applied to a style of decorative arts that was widely disseminated in Europe and the USA during the 1920s and 1930s. Derived from the style made popular by the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, the term has been used only since the late 1960s, when there was a revival of interest in the decorative arts of the early 20th century. Since then the term ‘Art Deco’ has been applied to a wide variety of works produced during the inter-war years, and even to those of the German Bauhaus. But Art Deco was essentially of French origin, and the term should, therefore, be applied only to French works and those from countries directly influenced by France.

The development of the Art Deco style, or the Style moderne as it was called at the time, closely paralleled the initiation of the 1925...

[Fr.: ‘new art’]

Decorative style of the late 19th century and the early 20th that flourished principally in Europe and the USA. Although it influenced painting and sculpture, its chief manifestations were in architecture and the decorative and graphic arts, the aspects on which this survey concentrates. It is characterized by sinuous, asymmetrical lines based on organic forms; in a broader sense it encompasses the geometrical and more abstract patterns and rhythms that were evolved as part of the general reaction to 19th-century historicism. There are wide variations in the style according to where it appeared and the materials that were employed.

Art Nouveau has been held to have had its beginnings in 1894 or 1895. A more appropriate date would be 1884, the year the progressive group Les XX was founded in Belgium, and the term was used in the periodical that supported it, Art Moderne: ‘we are believers in Art Nouveau’. The origin of the name is usually attributed to ...

Informal movement in architecture and the decorative arts that championed the unity of the arts, the experience of the individual craftsman, and the qualities of materials and construction in the work itself.

The Arts and Crafts Movement developed in the second half of the 19th century and lasted well into the 20th, drawing its support from progressive artists, architects and designers, philanthropists, amateurs, and middle-class women seeking work in the home. They set up small workshops apart from the world of industry, revived old techniques, and revered the humble household objects of pre-industrial times. The movement was strongest in the industrializing countries of northern Europe and in the USA, and it can best be understood as an unfocused reaction against industrialization. Although quixotic in its anti-industrialism, it was not unique; indeed it was only one among several late 19th-century reform movements, such as the Garden City movement, vegetarianism, and folksong revivals, that set the Romantic values of nature and folk culture against the artificiality of modern life....

(b 1845; d 1908).

American interior decorator and founder of the first tapestry factory in the USA. He worked for Herter Brothers (see Herter, Christian) on the decoration of a series of grand houses, notably William H. Vanderbilt’s house on Fifth Avenue, New York, and William Welsh Harrison’s Grey Towers Castle (now part of Arcadia University) in Philadelphia. When the Vanderbilt house was completed in 1882, Christian Herter returned to Germany and Baumgarten took over the company. In 1891 he started his own company, William Baumgarten and Company, Inc., and in 1893 complemented his interior decoration business with a tapestry factory in his Fifth Avenue premises. He recruited weavers and dyers from the Royal Windsor Tapestry Manufactory (which had closed in 1890), including five weavers from the Foussadier family. The factory’s tapestries include one at Grey Towers (1898).

(b 1754; d 1825).

French painter and designer of textiles and embroideries. He trained with Philippe de Lasalle and went on to become one of the most celebrated designers of textiles and embroidery for Lyon silk manufacturers. His clients included the Empress Josephine, for whom he designed the furniture fabrics at Malmaison (near Paris), and the Empress Marie-Louise, for whom he designed a coronation robe. His work in every medium is chiefly remarkable for its flowers. It is sometimes difficult to attribute work with confidence to Bony or de Lasalle; the silk wallpaper for Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom in Versailles (of which some is now in the Musée Historiques des Tissus in Lyon), for example, could be by either artist....

(b 1717; d 1812).

English tapestry-weaver, upholsterer and cabinetmaker. In 1755 he assumed control of the Soho tapestry works owned by his relative William Bradshaw. In 1757 he worked with the tapestry-weaver Paul Saunders (1722–71) to make tapestry and furniture for Holkham Hall, the Norfolk seat of the earls of Leicester; their work (designed to match a set of Brussels tapestry panels) can still be seen in the Green State Bedroom. Bradshaw subsequently supplied furniture to Admiralty House in London (...

(b Cockerham, 1700; d after 1762).

English furniture-maker and tapestry-weaver. He founded a London workshop in 1728, and in 1755 passed control of the workshop to George Smith Bradshaw. He was unusual in his ability to undertake both the joinery and the tapestry upholstery for furniture (e.g. four armchairs. New York, Met.).

Originally a thick cover for a bed, table etc. From the 16th century the term included knotted carpets from the Middle East; it gradually became exclusively associated with knotted carpets placed on the floor. By the early 18th century other forms of fabric floor covering had assumed the same name. (See also Rug.)

This is considered the quintessential carpet. Woven originally in Asia, such carpets were highly prized and later copied in many parts of Europe. The knots, tied in cut lengths of yarn, the ends of which formed the pile, were inserted during the process of construction, or weaving; they were tied in rows across the warps, each row of knots being separated by one, two, or three picks of weft, laid in as alternate rows of plain weave (see Textile, §II, 1). Hand-knotted carpets can be divided into several categories, according to the knot used; this is, consequently, a means of establishing a carpet’s provenance. There are four types of knot, each type known by several names. The first is the Turkish, Ghiordes, or ...

English group of painters, designers and craftsmen, active between c. 1883 and 1892. It was one of the earliest Arts and Crafts groups and initiated the practice of attributing designs to individual craftsmen, which became a firm principle of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Its platform was the ‘unity of the arts’, and its aim was ‘to render all branches of art the sphere, no longer of the businessman, but of the artist’. Although output was limited and sporadic, the group had considerable influence by exhibiting its products and publishing a quarterly magazine, the Century Guild Hobby Horse (1884–92). Perhaps 20 craftsmen in all were associated with the Guild, but the only members were A. H. Mackmurdo, Herbert Horne and Selwyn Image.

The Guild’s work was mainly domestic. It offered textiles, wallpapers, furniture, stained glass, metalwork, decorative painting and architectural design, all of which were displayed at the ...

[Fr.: ‘caterpillar’]

Velvety cord, having short threads or fibres of silk and wool standing out at right angles from a central core of cotton thread or wire. Chenille is used in trimming and bordering dresses and furniture. The term also denotes a type of embroidery needle.

(b Flensburg, March 6, 1866; d Wiesbaden, Jan 5, 1945).

German designer. After an early career as an interior designer he turned to the design of tapestries (subsequently woven at the Scherbeker Kunstgewerbeschule), porcelain (table wares), drinking glasses (for the Theresienthaler Kristallglasfabrik) and silver cutlery. After 1914 he worked primarily as a painter and writer.

(b Peckham Rye, London, Jan 29, 1845; d London, April 18, 1910).

English designer and writer. He was educated in France and Germany, but his interest in design was provided by visits to the South Kensington Museum, London (now the Victoria & Albert Museum). In 1865 he entered the office of Lavers & Barraud, glass painters and designers. Some time later he became keeper of cartoons at Clayton & Bell and by 1870 had joined Heaton, Butler & Bayne, for whom he worked on the decoration of Eaton Hall, Ches. In late 1880 Day started his own business designing textiles, wallpapers, stained glass, embroidery, carpets, tiles, pottery, furniture, silver, jewellery and book covers. He designed tiles for Maw & Co. and Pilkington’s Tile and Pottery Co., stained glass and wallpaper for W. B. Simpson & Co., wallpapers for Jeffrey & Co. and textiles for Turnbull & Stockdale where he was made Art Director in 1881.

Day was a founder-member and Secretary of the ...

[drawn-thread work]

Needlework made by drawing threads out of a woven fabric and embroidering over the remaining threads to produce an open-work pattern. It was used widely in medieval Europe, usually with white thread on a white ground, for bed-furniture and table-coverings. Drawn work was the predecessor of Lace.

(b Glasgow, July 4, 1834; d Mulhouse, Alsace, Nov 24, 1904).

Scottish designer, Botanist and writer. He trained at the Government School of Design, Somerset House, London, between 1847 and 1854, during which time he was strongly influenced by the design reform efforts of Henry Cole, Richard Redgrave and Owen Jones. In 1854 he began to lecture at the school on botany and in 1856 supplied a plate illustrating the ‘geometrical arrangement of flowers’ for Jones’s Grammar of Ornament. In 1857 he presented a series of lectures at the Royal Institution entitled ‘On the Relationship of Science to Ornamental Art’, which he followed up in a series of 11 articles in the Art Journal (1857–8) on the similar subject of ‘Botany as Adapted to the Arts and Art-Manufacture’. His first three books were on botanical subjects, and in 1860 he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Jena for his research in this area.

Following the International Exhibition of ...

(b Versailles, Sept 23, 1749; d Paris, Apr 30, 1825).

French designer. He was the only son of François Dugourc, controller to the household of the Duc d’Orléans. Little precise information has survived regarding his early years and artistic training. He developed his gift for drawing and design as a pupil of Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin. He is thought to have made a brief trip to Italy (c. 1764–5), where he is believed to have met Johann Joachim Winckelmann, events that seem to have inspired his passion for the ancient world and its art. His first known work is an allegory for the opera house at Versailles, executed in honour of the wedding of the Dauphin in May 1770. In November 1776 he married Marie-Anne Adélaïde Bélanger, elder sister of François-Joseph Bélanger. Together with Bélanger and Georges Jacob, Dugourc worked on the interiors of the château of Bagatelle, as well as for a glittering private clientele that included the ...

Architectural and decorative arts style that flourished in the USA from shortly after the acknowledgement of independence in the Treaty of Paris (1783) until c. 1820. The term is derived from the period surrounding the creation of the federal constitution in 1787 and was in use in a political sense by that year. Essentially it was a form of Neo-classicism, strongly influenced by manifestations of that style in England and, to a lesser extent, in France; but at times certain more conservative qualities inherited from the previous Colonial period are also present. The inspiration of European, and especially English, Neo-classical architecture was to be expected in a society grounded in that of 18th-century England; but an added impetus was the association often cited at the time between the fledgling American republic and the ancient Roman one.

Although a few indications of European Neo-classical influence are found in the American colonies before the Revolution began in ...

From the time John Cassian established the first female foundation in Marseille in ad 410, monastic women lived in varying states of enclosure and were surrounded by diverse images and objects that contributed to their devotion, education and livelihood. The first rule for women, written in 512 by St Caesarius of Arles, emphasized their strict separation from men and the world, as did the Periculoso, a directive issued by Pope Boniface VIII (reg 1294–1303) in 1298. Various architectural solutions developed throughout the Middle Ages to reconcile the necessities of enclosure with the access required by male clerics to celebrate Mass and provide pastoral care. Nuns’ choirs, where the women would gather for their daily prayers, were often constructed as discreet spaces in the church, which allowed women to hear or see the Mass without interacting with the cleric, as in the 10th-century choir in the eastern transept gallery at St Cyriakus in Gernrode, Germany. In some Cistercian examples, the nuns’ choir appeared at the west end of the nave. Dominican and Franciscan architecture was largely varied. Double monasteries, which housed men and women, also required careful construction. A 7th-century text describing the church of St Brigida in ...

(b Nordhausen, June 16, 1894; d Berlin, March 19, 1975).

German textile designer, interior designer, and muralist. Geyer-Raack specialized in painting at the Kunst- und Gewerbemuseums, Berlin, and was heavily influenced by her professor, the architect and interior designer Bruno Pauls. In 1920 and 1921, during her studies, she participated in summer courses at the Bauhaus in Weimar, at the height of the formalization of the Bauhaus philosophies, probably studying under Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer. Upon completion of her coursework she continued to develop her skills, studying in Paris throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1924 she opened her own art and design studio where some of her first projects were designing textiles and carpets for DeWeTex and Rasch. She also began painting murals, using many techniques, including fresco, which eventually led to a long career working for private clients and on public projects. Her work in murals and textiles led her to design wallpaper and complete interiors for clients. Collaborating with the architectural firm B. Paul Umbau in ...