Antiques – Art Deco Is a Trip Around the Globe

Art Deco and the Modern Movement in art and design all started coming together with the formation by Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus school in Berlin in 1919. This would finally be the new look for the new century, and it didn’t take long for Bauhaus ideas to spread around the world.
There had been other attempts to break away from the endless revivalism of the Victorian Era, including: the Aesthetic, Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau movements. As reactions to industrialization, these movements stressed hands-on artistry and craftsmanship.
The Bauhaus, on the other hand, accepted the inevitability of the machine age, and encouraged a profitable partnership between art and industry that would usher in the age of the artist as designer.
The whole concept was introduced to the world at the Paris Exhibition of 1925, which had a long French name that was shortened to “Art Deco,” giving the movement a permanent name.
One of the companies operating in Paris at that time was Robj, the pseudonym of Jean Born. Robj is the perfect example of what the Bauhaus was aiming for. He started in business in 1908, as an industrialist, manufacturing electrical ignitions.
Eventually, Robj took an interest in ceramics and encouraged artists to send him designs for porcelain novelties, which he would arrange to have manufactured. Unfortunately, Robj died in a car crash in 1922, and never go to see the Paris Exhibition.
The company was taken over by a shareholder, Lucien Willmetz, and things really took off. He continues the business in what he calls, “porcelain trinkets,” and from 1927 to 1931 held a competition for the best designs.
In 1928, Robj came out with its biggest success and signature product, novelty liquor decanters. They followed that the next year with fanciful tobacco jars. The company closed in 1928, having spanned the height of the Art Deco period.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world was catching up. In England, several ceramic companies got on board, like Burgess and Leigh (Burleigh Ware), Crown Decal, Suzie Cooper and Clarice Cliff.
In America the city fathers of Miami Beach jumped on the Art Deco bandwagon when they re-built the city after a destructive fire in 1925.
The Chase Copper and Brass Co. was formed by designers who were miffed when representatives of the Coolidge administration, saying that there was no modern design movement in America, turned down an opportunity to participate in a European show. Chase made decorative objects like bookends, vases and barware out of industrial parts.
Eventually, the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933 and New York’s Fair in 1930 would bring the Art Deco style to the whole country.
The Modern Movement came to the end in the late 1960’s and early ‘70s with the advent of post-modern and the cynical notion that if soup cans were art than everything was art and if everything was art than nothing was art. So, why not be a Minimalist? Oh Pooh. I think we’ve all had enough of that.
The Modern Movement, which started with the Bauhaus and Art Deco, is always optimistic and forward-looking. Through the Mid-Century Modern of the post-war 1940s and ‘50s right up to its last hurrah with Wildwood’s Do-Wop style, is chic, elegant fun.
It’s also a cosmopolitan style. There would be Czecho-Deco, Italian, Deco, Scandanavian Modern, Egyptian Deco, Chinese Deco and Tropical Deco.
Too often, Americans are afraid to be chic. We would rather go with good, old, safe and solid Americana. The next time we re-think our decor, let’s have the courage to make are interiors look as smart as we really are.
Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is the author of “The Antique Story Book: Finding the Real Value of Old Things,” and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swanton. Send your comments, questions and appraisal requests to: aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.