After flying across the Pacific from New Zealand we endured a 10-hour layover in San Francisco. We occupied ourselves with: finding a short term hotel room – no such place; a shower – closed for renovations; a place to sleep – the meditation/prayer room but that didn’t last long because the dark quiet room was intoxicating […]
Read More...Georgetown, the old part of Penang, is a well-preserved UNESCO World Heritage Site. There one can explore a unique culture that began in the 15th century when the Straits of Malacca was one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Chinese migrated from southern China and settled up and down the Malay coast and […]
Read More...The funny thing was only the hotel was promoted in the tourist brochures as being in the Art Deco style. With the Spanish styled tiled roof and metal balconies I didn’t see it. The columns were particularly off putting though the font of the hotel name is 1930s. But once inside the old part I saw this […]
Read More...When travelling I like to look out for Art Deco architecture and decorative arts.While in the small town Ranfurly, in the centre of New Zealand’s South Island, I came across some fine examples of Art Deco architecture in the main street. The stepped roof line was a popular shape in buildings and motifs of […]
Read More...In 1936, Tweedsmuir Mansions, with 12 apartments, was built on 900 Boulevard Street in Victoria, BC. Today it is a well preserved example of the Art Deco style of architecture. Apart from the yucky textured plaster on the outside many of its typically Art Deco features have been kept. The whole building is stepped horizontally and […]
Read More...An interesting feature of step design use during the Art Deco period is that even though the ancient source of the inspiration was so obvious, the art, architecture and fashion garments were celebrated as something refreshingly new. Here is a silk painting obviously inspired by recent discoveries of ancient buildings found in the jungles of […]
Read More...Here is an image of my design wall at an early stage of my Art Deco study. I grouped images according to influences on the movement, illustrations of why it was known as a ‘total’ style, design features, materials and colours. These are some of the influences on the movement. One of the […]
Read More...While I was studying the Art Deco Movement, I put all of the images I collected up on my large design wall. I would group them and regroup them according to how my thoughts were developing. One thing that struck me was no matter how I rearranged the images they always had the same feel. […]
Read More...In the Royal BC Museum there are 2 Art Deco garments that are well worth the hunt to find. This silk georgette evening dress, 1926-28, illustrates well the shock of the new. For the first time in European history women went out in public wearing garments that exposed their lower legs and the full length […]
Read More...One of the unique aspects of the Art Deco Movement is it ‘moved’ all around the world. Here in Victoria, where I live, I found some fine examples of well preserved Art Deco architecture. In 1931 Imperial Oil built a 3 tiered garage on the waterfront inner harbour area of the city and topped it […]
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