Throughout my china dinnerware travels of many years I've found that there are a multitude of swirling and flowing Art Nouveau style china patterns, but not so many china dinnerware patterns in the Art Deco style.
Still, when perusing some online marketplaces such as Ebay or Etsy, I find many sellers mislabeling some china patterns as Art Deco, when these china patterns really have no characteristics of being created in the Art Deco Style.
I have to say that I really hate when this happens! I don't know if these sellers are just guessing as to the style, or if they just don't understand what the elements of Art Deco consist of. Either way, it's akin to spreading misinformation and could even at times be seen as deceptive to a buyer.
Maybe they find that the china they have was produced during the same time period that Art Deco was popular, so they label it as Art Deco. This alone does not constitute a china pattern being of Art Deco style.
Art Deco style was most popular beginning around 1920 with their most popular period being around 1925 to 1935.
Art Deco style (style being the key word here) is a visual distinction of design that has certain characteristics that separate and distinguish it from other styles and designs.
For example, just as Art Nouveau design is visually identifiable in many cases by it's motifs of flowing and swirling tendrils, Art Deco design is identifiable by certain distinct characteristics that allow it to be called just that; Art Deco.
Let's take a look at some of the distinctive elements of Art Deco style!
~ Geometric shapes and straight lines often in repetitive patterns
~ Motifs such as sunbursts, sunrises, skyscrapers, and trains (often traveling to the foreground from a distant point via use of perspective), fan shapes, palm leaf shapes, and ziggurat style forms.
~ Floral patterns stylized by geometric shapes: for example circles to represent flowers as opposed to the natural organic shapes of petals and varied edges.
Please know that there is much more to Art Deco design than I am writing here. Influences from many different cultures (think China, Egypt, Mayan civilizations just to start) as well as art influences such as Cubism, and the rise of the industrial age (think streamlined skyscrapers and city skylines) all lend a hand in the creation of Art Deco style, and I encourage you to explore it further. But for the case of this blog post, let's get to it and look at some examples of Art Deco china patterns!
The Art Deco influence had an impact not only on the pattern decoration of china dinnerware pieces, but the shapes of those pieces as well.
The stylized floral decorations and motifs on china dinnerware were most apparent in pieces made by Clarice Cliff.
So how do you come to recognize Art Deco style when you see it? Simply by doing a little bit of research and looking at good examples of Art Deco design!
A side note:
Art Deco style is not only reflected in visual art. A few years ago I took Harvard's Poetry In America, Modernism course and my eyes and mind were opened up to how Art Deco style was reflected in the written word. Carl Sandburg's "Mamie" and "Skyscrapers" are examples of this, in case you want to check them out.
Laura Beth Love
Dishfunctional Designs
Broken China Jewelry
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