THE DECORATIVE THIRTIES
Martin Battersby

Martin Battersby, Philippe Garner (Revised and Edited by): THE DECORATIVE THIRTIES. NYC: Whitney Library of Design, a division of Watson-Guptill Publications, 1988. First revised edition. A fine hardcover bound in a fine dust jacket: booksllers stamp along bottom fore-edge. Interior unmarked and clean. Out-of-print.

8.5 x 11.5 hardcover book with 224 pages, with forty-eight full-colour and 176 black and white photographic illustrations, and a bibliography.

From the book: "First published in 1971, The Decorative Thirties is the companion volume to Martin Battersby's enormously successful The Decorative Twenties . Battersby's qualifications as a historian of the thirties were impeccable. This was the decade when he began his own career as an interior designer, and he knew personally several of the major English artists and designers of the time. In this book he discusses the work of, among others, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Jean-Michel Frank, Eugene Berman, Schiaparelli, Rex Whistler and Paul Frankl.

This was a time of extraordinary diversity of taste in the decorative arts - ceramics, fabrics, fashion, jewelry, graphics. The stark simplicity of Modernism existed side by side with neo-Baroque and neo-Victorian revivals, the neo-Romantics found favor with their charming and fantastical work, and the Surrealists ran anthropomorphical riot. The ingenuity of designers was put to the test by the range of their clients' demands, by the need to design for a less affluent market during the Depression, and by the challenge of working with new materials such as plywood and tubular metal. Martin Battersby's thorough groundwork and research are enlivened in this important study by his discrimination as a collector and decorator."

This new edition has been revised by Philippe Garner, who also provides a comprehensive survey of Battersby's source material. More than 215 illustrations, many in color and some previously unpublished, help to make this an incomparable guide and essential reference work for all those interested in every branch of the decorative arts of the thirties."

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction
  • The Background
  • The Depression and its Impact on the Decorative Arts
  • Decorative Style for Interiors
  • Art and Industry
  • Interior Furnishings
  • Decorative Painters
  • The Surrealist Influence on Decoration
  • Period Revivalism
  • Fashion
  • Hollywood Style
  • Envoi
  • Source Books and Further Reading
  • Index

Includes work by: Alvar Aalto, Victor Arwas, Atelier Martine, Aubusson tapestry works, Les Ballets Russes, Ballets de Monte Carlo, Balthus, Pierre Barbe, Georges Barbier, Irina Baronova, Phyllis Banon, Bauhaus Edward Bawden, Alexander Bayes, Cecil Beaton, Beauvais tapestry works, Carlos de Beistegui, Vanessa Bell, Christian Berard, Eugene Berman, Leonid Berman, Siegfried Bing, BlacKamoors, Robert Block, Edgar Brandt, Frank Brangwyn, Georges Braque, Marcel Breuer, Breves Gallery 129 "British Art in Industry" exhibition (1935), Ivan Da Silva Bruhns, Reco Capey, Michael Cardew Carpets and rugs Cartier, A. M. Cassandre, Coco Chanel, Serge Chermayeff, Giorgio DeChirico, Claridge's, Arundell Clarke, Charles B. Cochran, Jean Cocteau, Mme. Cuttoli, Salvador Dali, Andre Derain, Donald Deskey, Design in Industry Exhibition (1935), Dorland Hall Exhibition (1933), Marion Dorn, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Dury, Jean Dunand, Max Emst, Fortnum & Mason, Jean-Michel Frank, Paul T. Frankl, Pierre Jeanneret, E. McKnight Kauffer, Rene Lalique, Le Corbusier, Raymond McGrath, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rene Magritte, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Paul Nash, Amedee Ozefant, Derek Patmore, Charlotte Perriand, Pablo Picasso, Paul Poiret, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Serge Roche, Marcel Rochas, Gilbert Rohde, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Walter Dorwin Teague and many others.

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