Art Deco
Paris, the 1920s. During these eventful and opportunistic years, Paris was the world’s centre of art and culture. In Montmartre, Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter the sound of jazz clubs is mingled with the smell of champagne and cocktails. Ladies dressed in chiffon dresses decorated with beads and sequins, their hair styled in a short bob and their hands carrying a small cigarette holder gallivant through the city. The Paris of Josephine Baker, Picasso and Hemingway.
The Tiffany ‘Art Deco’ line is based on this atmospheric and expressionistic period. The name Art Deco is an abbreviation of the name of the international exposition “L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriëls Modernes” that was held in Paris in 1925. It was the first place where the new language of shapes was shown to an international crowd for the first time. The style originated in Paris after the First World War, but was applied almost universally, in virtually all European countries as well as in the United States. Think of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and the atmosphere of ‘The Great Gatsby’, the famous novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Applying monumental geometrical shapes based on African folk art, a logical consequence of the Geometrical Art Nouveau, is one of the most important features of Art Deco. Typical of this collection’s Tiffany lamps and Tiffany window panels are the glamorous fan motifs, the bold, geometrical shapes and the chic nacre glass combined with intense colours, such as turquoise, emerald, purple, red and yellow that are so typical of the flamboyant Art Deco style.
