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Art Deco took its name from the great Paris exhibition of 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, and the style's centenary in 2025 brought a fresh wave of exhibitions, publications and collecting interest. A hundred years on, Deco remains the most glamorous of all design movements, and its furniture, jewellery, bronzes and silver are fixtures of our sales in Guildford.
The style emerged from the optimism that followed the First World War. Where Art Nouveau had curled and flowed, the new age wanted speed, geometry and polish. Deco drew on Cubism's angles, the glamour of the ocean liner and the machine, and, after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, a craze for Egyptian motifs that swept through jewellery and design. The 1925 Paris exhibition gathered all of it in one place and exported the style to the world.
Deco is built on symmetry and geometric precision: sunbursts, chevrons, stepped forms and streamlined curves. Just as characteristic is the luxury of its materials, lacquer and exotic veneers, chrome and glass, shagreen and marble, and in jewellery the cool brilliance of platinum and diamonds. It was a style equally at home on a skyscraper and a cigarette case, and that range is exactly what makes it so collectable.
The Chrysler Building's stainless steel crown of 1930 is the movement's great monument, but Britain has its own rich Deco fabric: the Hoover Building on the A40, seaside pavilions, and the Odeon cinemas whose faience facades and neon brought Hollywood glamour to the high street. That architectural confidence trickled down into every object of the period.
In Paris, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann made furniture of a refinement not seen since the eighteenth century, in macassar ebony and ivory inlay, and his work now stands at the summit of the market. London had its own masters: the Epstein brothers' 'Cloud' suites in figured walnut, with their billowing curved backs, have become the most recognisable British Deco furniture of all and remain enduring saleroom favourites. Mirrored cocktail cabinets, chrome and Bakelite lamps and geometric rugs complete the look, and all of them sell.
No painter captured the Deco decade like Lempicka. Her polished, machine-smooth portraits of the fashionable and the rich define the era's self-image, and the market has caught up emphatically, her major portraits now make several million pounds when they appear at auction.
Romain de Tirtoff, known by his initials as Erté, spent seven decades turning fashion illustration into art, from Harper's Bazaar covers to theatre and film design. His gouaches, bronzes and later serigraphs keep his elegant, elongated figures within reach of collectors at every level.
Deco jewellery is the style at its most concentrated: geometric platinum settings, old-cut diamonds, and the bold contrast of onyx, coral, jade and lapis. The great Paris houses, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Boucheron, led the way, and Cartier's carved-gemstone Tutti Frutti pieces have become some of the most sought after jewels of the twentieth century. Even unsigned Deco rings, bracelets and brooches carry a premium over later work, the period simply has a following that never fades.
Deco is one of the steadiest fields we handle. Jewellery leads the market, signed pieces command serious premiums and fine unsigned platinum and diamond work sells strongly in every sale. Figural bronzes by Demetre Chiparus and Ferdinand Preiss, cocktail silver, Epstein suites and good mirrored furniture all have established followings. The cautions are the usual ones: reproductions and marriages abound, particularly in bronzes and furniture, and originality of finish matters, so a specialist eye is worth engaging before buying or selling. For the movements either side of Deco, see our guides to Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
A century after the Paris exhibition, Deco pieces are exactly the kind of thing found in Surrey and London family homes: a grandmother's platinum ring, a walnut cocktail cabinet, a bronze figure on the mantelpiece. Our jewellery, furniture and decorative arts specialists offer a free valuation from photographs or at home, and can tell you quickly whether a piece is period, what it should make, and how best to sell it.
