Author(s): Charlotte Fiell; Peter Fiell

Design

'Decorative Art 1900s & 1910's' highlights the exciting period that marked the aesthetic transition from the Victorian Era to the Modern Age. Concepts of simplicity, utility and beauty ushered out the heavy ornamentation of High Victorian style. Beginning in 1906, the Decorative Art yearbook's first year of publication, TASCHEN's look at interior design from the first two decades of the 20th century gives us a look at the avant-garde work of designers such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Charles Voysey, and Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott.

From Britain to Austria to the Americas, the Decorative Art yearbook served as a communicator of styles and ideas as the "New Art" movement began its rise. This crucial period was not only documented in the yearbooks, but promoted and affected by them as well. This was a time when "modern" was truly a new concept, one that many designers had to fight for; the evolution of styles and ideas moved at a fast pace, punctuated dramatically by the First World War, whose effects on society and architecture were vast.

This volume faithfully reproduces the best examples from the yearbooks of the 1900s and 1910s, bringing you an excellent guide through the founding years of modernism in decorative art.