Design

Presenting '1925: Celebrating Art Deco'

2 June 2025

Joy McCall

In June 2025 we were delighted to celebrate celebrate 100 years since the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes and shine a spotlight on Art Deco as a style in our one-off sale, 1925: Celebrating Art Deco led by senior specialist Joy McCall.

1925: Celebrating Art Deco

View our June 2025 auction results.

EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS ET INDUSTRIELS MODERNES

2025 marks the centenary since Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes was held in Paris. The 1925 exhibition was a defining moment in the history of design. A hundred years later, reflecting on its legacy, we can see just how was pivotal it was in the history of design and architecture, and also why it still has significant resonance now.

The exhibition was intended to run from April to October 1925 but proved to be so popular that it was extended until the November of that year.

It was not especially large by comparison to previous world fairs, but it followed the Turin exhibition of 1902 as a fair focussed on modern consumer goods. The objective was to promote French design. The French government wanted to present French architecture, furniture, and decorative arts to the world as a way of affirming their superiority. They had perceived a threat from rising German design and industrial production particularly at the end of the 19th Century. The Exposition had been planned to take place earlier but was delayed because of fears of impending war.

It is estimated 16 million visitors attended the Exposition, which brought together the world’s most influential architects and designers who established the agenda for the rest of the century. It was here that French Art Deco was recognised as a style and then in turn influenced other countries in the development of their own regional variants. Also Modernism arguably made its first appearance with Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion, while Scandinavian countries presented a new type of aesthetic we would now refer to as Mid-Century Modernism or Scandinavian design.

The only notable absences from the Exposition were Germany, who following the conclusion of the Great War deemed there to be insufficient time to prepare for an exhibition, and the USA who viewed it too costly to stage a show in Paris.

^{Illustrated above (left-right):}
^{Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes postcard, 1925. © Ministère de la Culture.}
^{Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Grand-Palais, La parfumerie. © Ministère de la Culture - Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / image GrandPalaisRmn}
^{Pavillon de la manufacture nationale de Sèvres. Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes de 1925. © Ministère de la Culture - Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / image Médiathèque du Patrimoine}

ART DECO STYLE

The second dimension of the sale is to focus on Art Deco as a style. It is out of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes that the term Art Deco was coined. The phrase art deco had been used before, but it was only after 1966 that it first truly was assimilated into everyday parlance. There were arguably two main triggers for this – one was an exhibition entitled Les Années 25 : Art Déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit Nouveau, that was held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris where it came to be identified as a specific style. The second was a book by Bevis Hillier entitled Art Deco of the 20s and 30s published in 1968 that spawned an exhibition in Minneapolis in 1971.

From an era often described as the Roaring Twenties, the Machine Age and the Golden Age of Travel, Art Deco was a style rich in diversity. Besides being both international and national with its regional variations, it was a style paying homage to other cultures. While luxury and traditional craftsmanship were esteemed, modernity was also revered with sawing skyscrapers and new materials explored.

The sale includes furniture, sculpture, lighting, carpets, glass, ceramics, silver, metalwork, jewellery and posters. Work by designers such as René Lalique, Demétre Chiparus, Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, Raoul Dufy, Roger Broders, Gio Ponti, Christofle, Michel Decoux, Georges Lavroff, Josef Lorenzl, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Edgar Brandt, Marcel-Andre Bouraine and Claire Jeanne Roberte Colinet.