Vintage Archives ~ INTERIOR DESIGN & CONSULTANCY FOR PROPERTY SUCCESS

Art Deco Postcard — Pavilion Mulhouse – Original 1925 Paris Exposition Des Arts Decoratifs postcard

Art Deco is my favourite period style in interior design and architecture. I love everything to do with the Roaring Twenties, society was changing dramatically with the emancipation of women through the flapper movement and many world pioneering brands were born such as fashion brands Chanel and Gucci. I love the styles of Coco Chanel and designers that were her contemporaries such as Italian Elsa Schiaparelli renown for signature “shocking pink” and her knitwear. Her designs were influenced by the Dadaists. Art Deco as a movement was originally born out of an exhibition in Paris in 1925 “Exposition Internationale Des Arts Decoratif” and the name Art Deco is simply a shortened version of this. I learnt French at an early age going on my first french exchange at the age of nine to Versailles. After this I was so impressed with the extravagance of the Palais de Versailles I believe that was one of the first times I thought about becoming an interior designer. I took many more trips to France over my school and college years taking French at GCSE and A-level and even a module of my interior design degree was in French. On one of my trips I came across some postcards on a streetside market as well as some original twenties newspapers called “Le Petit Echo De La Mode” which were fashion newspapers (I originally wanted to be a fashion designer from an early age too!) I had to buy them and still have them (there are many many images on Google of these). The postcards I still have too and they are original postcards from the Paris Exhibition of 1925 which I am posting here today. If you like these please also see the previous blogpost on my original New York World Fair postcards found on my honeymoon to New York!

Anyway what prompted me to write this is I’m now tentatively waiting for some postcards I’ve just bid on on Ebay of the Crystal Palace which was known as the “Great Exhibition of 1851”, as I felt having a London exhibition set to go with the New York and Paris ones was a must even if they are a little earlier in history! I can see them under some clocks if I ever get a design studio up and running. If I get them I will post them on here. Do you collect anything from the past if so what I’d love to hear how it started?

Pavillon De La Ville De Paris 1925 — Postcard from 1925 Paris Exhibition Internationale Des Art Decoratifs

Ville De Nuit – original postcard from Paris 1925 Exhibition Des Arts Decoratifs

Word Trade Fair 1939 Depicting the Skylon and Perisphere on a Postcard — New York’s Wolrd Trade Fair 1939 Depicting the Trylon and Perisphere on a Postcard by Keystone

Recently I made the trip of a lifetime to New York and California for my honeymoon for 3 weeks. I’ve never been to the USA before and so it was all the more exciting.

One of my interests is looking at the future – this fascinates me not only on a contemporary level but also looking historically at what we thought would lie ahead of us. I like to see what is going on and one of the ways I do this is by joining forums such as the Technology Strategy Boards’ “Knowledge Transfer Networks” or “KTN’s” essentially a knowledge forum.

The Technology Strategy Board is a government body that promotes technology through businesses in the UK. It links the public sector to private companies small and large to work on live projects together in an innovative way. Forums or “platforms” as they call them have different themes such as Low Impact Buildings or Assisted Living. Within these platforms lie the KTN’s (knowledge forums) such as Modern Built Environment. Read more here

http://www.innovateuk.org/ourstrategy/innovationplatforms/lowimpactbuilding.ashx

A programme called Catapult Centres is also fascinating; these are technology and innovation centres which aim to bring the best of the academic research world and join it with industry, promoting the UK to gain business here and abroad. One of the most exciting is their Catapult Centre entitled “Future Cities” – the location is still being decided. Read more about the Catapult Programme here:

https://catapult.innovateuk.org/about-catapult

Another of my passions is the 1920’s and I have collected a few interesting things in Paris from the 1920’s such as postcards from the original Art Deco exhibition in Paris in 1925 and a fashion newspaper also printed in the 1920’s. Imagine my joy when I found these postcards depicting the New York World Fair of 1939 – a vision of the future as they saw it then the Trylon and the Perisphere on these postcard drawings were actually built . The fair was “Building the World of Tomorrow”. Even better the guy that sold them to me was a young child and saw these very buildings at the fair himself!