The Art Deco style, named after the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, reached its peak in the 1920s. A new artistic language driven by a formidable vital impulse born of recent peace, left its mark on urban and domestic architecture, but also on all forms of design: furniture, mural painting, glassware, ceramics. This book offers a magnificently illustrated panorama of this ornamental aesthetic, which blend into the world's artistic landscape with materials as luxurious as lacquer, ivory or stingray.

Franziska Bolz is an ethnologist, art historian and curator. Her current focus is contemporary subjects and East African art.