Decorative Arts 1920s (Varia)

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Summary: REPRINTS FROM THE HIGHLY PRIZED DECORATIVE ART YEARBOOKS
Review: TASCHEN's Decorative Art series spans the 20th century through the 1970s and carefully reproduces the best of Studio Magazine's Decorative Art yearbooks. Published annually from 1906 until 1980, the yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics, and remained on the cutting edge throughout its nearly eight-decade run. Since going out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have been highly prized by collectors and dealers. Preserving the yearbooks' original page layouts, TASCHEN's Decorative Art books bring you an authentic experience of each decade's design trends and styles. The now complete six-volume set is an essential addition to the comprehensive design library and the devoted collector will want them all.

Decorative Art 1920s - Moving from the spirit of the Jazz Age to the cool simplicity of Le Corbusier's early "machines for living", Decorative Art 1920s is a survey of the groundbreaking innovations of interior design and architecture in the century's wildest decade. Demonstrating the dictum that form follows function, this volume features the design output of Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van de Rohe, to name a few.

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Summary: Good reference - mostly in black and white
Review: This is a solid reference work, one of a series, thick as a phone book, and full of information. I was unfamiliar with this book, now being reissued, and so was surprised (and a little disappointed) at the fact that it has precious few color plates. The zillions of illustrations are for the most part reproductions of contemporary 1920's ads and other published materials - and so are in black and white. There is an enormous amount of good material in this book - furniture, houses, and a lot of decorative and/or functional objects - but the casual reader (someone who is not a confirmed history-of-design maven) would be helped by having seen the artifacts in another venue - whether in museums, private collections, or in color photographs. This is a great resource for readers who are familiar with, and committed to, the subject.