A book on Art Deco that’s a work of art in itself — but where’s the Savoy, Claridge’s and the Oxo Tower?

Art Deco Norbert Wolf

Prestel, pp.288, £60

Over the past 45 years, there have been two distinct and divergent approaches to Art Deco. One of them — which was mine when I wrote the first little book on the subject in 1968 — was to treat the subject as a sociological, as well as artistic, phenomenon. As I wrote then, it was ‘the last of the total styles’, affecting almost everything, from letter-boxes and powder compacts to luxury liners and hotels.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £54, Tel: 08430 600033. Bevis Hillier is the author (with Stephen Escritt) of Art Deco Style.

TaggedArchitecture, Art history, Book review, Claridge’s, Cubism, Jazz Age, Modernism, the Oxo Tower

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A book on Art Deco that's a work of art in itself — but where's the Savoy, Claridge's and the Oxo Tower?

Get flying buttresses for your coffee table — Norbert Wolf's Art Deco is a massive and beautiful tome, despite a few strange omissions

Get 10 issues
for $10