‘As much backward-looking as forward-looking’ is how Jared Goss describes the French incarnation of Art Deco, an international design movement with so many facets that it was really more ‘an idiom, taste or sensibility than a unified style’. In this gloriously illustrated book, Goss, an independent scholar and erstwhile associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum, zeroes in on the mode’s specifically Gallic roots. Its proponents tried to be modern within the parameters of tradition, often incorporating elements of Directoire, Empire and Louis-Philippe style, their ornamental quality quite different from the industrial style of the Bauhaus.
Powered by a desire to recover the high standards and savoir-faire of the pre-industrial era, French Art Deco makers found their most representative expression in artist/craftsmen such as Cartier, Lalique and Puiforcat, Jean Dunand, Maurice Marinot and Emile Lenoble, and in ensembliers. These practitioners, Goss points out, differed from decorators in that they composed a space down to the last detail as a Gesamtkunstwerk, employing teams of artisans to realise their visions. Perhaps the greatest of them was Jacques-Emile (who also went by ‘EJ’) Ruhlmann.
Goss provides a detailed account of the context, realisation and legacy of the Collector’s House – Ruhlmann’s pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, conceived as the town house of an imaginary collector. The house, Goss argues, was the highlight and epitome of the entire fair. Though it was modelled on 18th-century pleasure pavilions such as François-Joseph Belanger’s Château de Bagatelle, its exterior, designed by architect Pierre Patout, was sober and pared-down, albeit topped with illuminated rooftop signs that Goss calls ‘gilding the lily’. By contrast, the interior was spectacularly textured and opulent, full of lacquer, precious woods, silk damask and velvet upholstery, with a bearskin on the bathroom floor, and, in the spirit of the imaginary ‘collector’ who might inhabit it, also showcased the work of Ruhlmann’s contemporaries, with ironwork by Edgar Brandt, enamels by Claudius Linossier and book bindings by Pierre Legrain. Colour schemes were delightful: ochre, violet, silver grey, blue and pink in the Grand Salon; white, gold and green in the boudoir.
The house – like the other pavilions at the fair – existed for only six months and was torn down at the end of the exposition, though some of its furnishings survive in museums and in private collections. Meanwhile, the elite designs of Art Deco became translated into mass-produced goods, from fashion to film sets and cocktail shakers; and the look also returned, raffishly, to London in the Biba years. But this book’s wonderful photographs and drawings go some way to bringing back Ruhlmann’s exacting pursuit of elegance: ‘Observe how artfully our ancestors of
the 18th century used verticals,’ he wrote, ‘achieving a sense of height and nobility... thus obtaining grandeur – because isn’t seeing grand and being grand, for us, a dominant preoccupation?’
Marking the centenary of the 1925 Paris Exposition, The Birth of Art Deco charts the emergence of a decorative movement through Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s opulent pleasure pavilion, L’Hôtel du Collectionneur. Jared Goss’s comprehensive exploration comes complete with a facsimile of the original exhibition catalogue.
A version of this article appears in the June 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
