Originally published as the catalog of an exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Mar. 27-July 20, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 443-449) and indexes.

The Style and the Age / Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton -- The Great War, Mass Society and 'Modernity' / Arthur Marwick -- Sources and Iconography -- Egyptomania / Christopher Frayling -- Deco Sculpture and Archaism / Penelope Curtis -- Ancient Mexican Sources of Art Deco / Oriana Baddeley -- Inspiration from the East / Anna Jackson -- Collecting and Constructing Africa / Ghislaine Wood -- National Traditions / Juliette Hibou -- Avant-Garde Sources / Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton -- From Pattern to Abstraction / Jonathan M. Woodham -- The Exotic / Ghislaine Wood -- The Paris 1925 Exhibition -- The International Exhibition / Charlotte Benton -- Paris 1925: Consuming Modernity / Tag Gronberg -- The Artist-Decorator / Stephane Laurent -- The Spread of Deco -- Germany, Austria and the Netherlands / Reino Liefkes -- Art Deco in Central Europe / David Crowley -- 'Lovely Neoclassical Byways': Art Deco in Scandinavia / Jennifer Hawkins Opie -- European Glass / Ghislaine Wood -- Italian Architecture and Design / Tim Benton -- Conscience and Consumption: Art Deco in Britain / Gillian Naylor -- British Art Deco Ceramics / Alun Graves -- Art Deco Architecture / Tim Benton -- Art Deco Fashion / Valerie Mendes -- Art Deco Jewellery / Clare Phillips -- Photography and the New Vision / Mark Haworth-Booth -- Art Deco Graphic Design and Typography / Jeremy Aynsley -- Art Deco Bindings / Rowan Watson, Annemarie Riding -- Art Deco and the Book Jacket / Rowan Watson, Annemarie Riding -- The Deco World -- Travel, Transport and Art Deco / Paul Atterbury -- Art Deco and Hollywood Film / Ghislaine Wood -- 'The Filter of American Taste': Design in the USA in the 1920s / Wendy Kaplan -- American Metalwork between the Wars / Jeannine Falino -- New Materials and Technologies / Jeffrey L. Meikle -- The Search for an American Design Aesthetic: From Art Deco to Streamlining / Nicolas P. Maffei -- Art Deco in East Asia / Anna Jackson -- Indo-Deco / Amin Jaffer -- Ambiguously Modern: Art Deco in Latin America / Rafael Cardoso -- 'A Growing Enthusiasm for Modernity': Art Deco in Australia / Christopher Menz -- Art Deco in South Africa / Dipti Bhagat -- Decline and Revival / Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton.

Spanning the boom of the roaring Twenties and the bust of the Depression-ridden 1930s, Art Deco came to epitomize all the glamour, luxury, and hedonism of the Jazz Age. It was the style of the flapper girl, the luxury ocean liner, the Hollywood film, and the skyscraper. It burst onto the world stage at the 1925 Paris Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, and quickly swept across the globe. Its influence was everywhere: it transformed the skylines of cities from New York to Shanghai and shaped the design of everything from fashionable evening wear to plastic radios. Above all it became the style of the pleasure palaces of the age - hotels, cocktail bars, night-clubs and cinemas. Though it originated before the First World War in the one-off masterwork or the limited edition piece, Deco became synonymous with mass consumption and modernity, and was enthusiastically embraced by taste-makers all over the globe, among them Josephine Baker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Maharajah of Indore.

Deco was an essentially eclectic style. It drew from European craft traditions as well as from the exotic cultures of Ancient Egypt, Meso-America, East Asia, and black Africa. Its use of rare and unashamedly precious materials was a reminder of the wealth of empires, whilst its streamlined and geometric imagery celebrated the machine age and the exuberance of the contemporary world. This lavish and authoritative book brings together leading experts in the field to discuss the phenomenon that was Art Deco. Its sources, varied forms of expression, distinct visual language and global spread are examined in a series of thought-provoking and scholarly essays. With its breathtaking illustrations this volume will stand as the definitive book on what was, arguably, the most popular style of the twentieth century.