Category Archives: Art Deco

Art Nouveau and Art Deco – On the Lookout for Art Styles While Travelling

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 […]

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Nyonya Baba Culture in the Straits of Malacca – Traditional Garments

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 […]

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Art Deco in Victoria

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 […]

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Step Design is Something New

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 […]

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Art Deco Design

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 predominant design […]

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Art Deco In Victoria BC Canada

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 with […]

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