Art Deco Interiors by Patricia Bayer

By the time of the 1925 Paris Exposition, the idea that a room's furnishings should form one unified design had taken hold among the era's leading decorators and their clients. Bayer traces this development from its French origins with designers like Ruhlmann, Süe et Mare, and André Groult through the establishment of full design studios that served an expanding middle class eager for the richly lacquered screens, tubular steel furniture, and bold geometric carpets associated with the style. The book pairs original period photographs with modern images of individual furniture pieces, giving readers both historical context and close detail on construction and materials.

American Streamline Moderne receives significant attention, including the emergence of contract interior designers like the Cranbrook group and Donald Deskey, whose work at Radio City Music Hall remains one of the style's most celebrated achievements. Large scale commercial applications are covered as well, from ocean liner interiors to cinema lobbies and hotel design, showing how thoroughly Art Deco shaped public spaces beyond private residences. The book also documents striking international examples, including the Maharajah of Indore's Manik Bagh palace, furnished with pieces by Eileen Gray and Louis Sognot alongside more traditionally Deco furnishings by Eckart Muthesius.

A closing section examines Art Deco's revival during the 1970s and 1980s, when postmodern designers including Michael Graves, Andrée Putman, and the Memphis Group drew on the style's vocabulary for new work, and many original Art Deco interiors underwent careful restoration. This combination of historical documentation and later revival makes Bayer's book a useful reference for understanding both the original movement and its lasting influence on interior design. For collectors and design historians focused on interiors specifically, it remains one of the most thorough single volume studies available.