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Trendsetters
Just inside the main entrance on the Place de la Concorde was the
main promenade of the Exposition, which housed the pavilions of the
major French department stores and manufacturers of luxury furniture,
porcelain, glassware, and textiles. Each pavilion was designed by a
different architect, and they tried to outdo each other with colorful
entrances, sculptural friezes, and murals of ceramics and metal.
Some of the most notable of these pavilions were designed for the
Parisian department stores, notably Galeries Lafayette, Le Bon Marché,
Au Louvre, and Le Printemps. To promote a consumer market for this
new Moderne aesthetic, these upscale department stores created
furnished and elaborately decorated showrooms intended to showcase
what we know today as Art Deco-inspired goods: furniture, decorative
objects, jewelry, home goods, art, fashion, and home decor.
Given its ornamental nature, it is perhaps unsurprising that the
most prominent Art Deco structures at the
Exposition were not necessarily from
countries and architects but those that
featured French businesses and decorative
A screen of iron and copper by Edgar Brandt artists. These pavilions provided wide,
called Oasis displayed at the 1925 Paris Exposition personal interpretations of the aesthetic
applied to a range of consumer goods and
labor. A monumental statue by Antoine Bourdelle, decorative objects.
celebrating the arrival of American fighting forces in The Art Deco aesthetic was also represented
France in 1917, further defined the entrance location, in the many French architects engaged in the
much to the delight of American visitors to the fair. design, building, and decorating of France’s
Once inside the gates, the visitor could sample the many business pavilions at the fair. The
delights of Art Deco in the many structures and Collector’s pavilion, designed by architect
pavilions that populated the fairgrounds. Pierre Patout and decorated by Jacques-Emile
Those visitors who entered through the La Porte Ruhlmann, as well as the bell-shaped Tourist
d’Honneur gate were met by an extraordinary pavilion, designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens,
fifty-foot fountain of illuminated glass designed by are now considered iconic representations of
the famed glassmaker, René Lalique. This art deco Deco style.
crystal fountain, Les sources de France, illuminated Several foreign pavilions built for the 1925
from within, was an amazing feat of engineering and The candelabra in bronze and glass was Paris Exposition incorporated their country’s
became one of the landmarks of the Exposition. The designed by Carl Bergsten for the reception hall. own interpretation of modern architecture
Fair also helped introduce Lalique to the U.S. market. It was made by Nordiska Kompaniet’s work- and design. Even the Soviet Union showed up
American tourists enamored with the refinement and shops as a distinctly luxury item. with a pavilion designed by Dom Mel’nikova,
craftsmanship of Lalique’s decorative objects bought up Lalique glasses in what today is considered Soviet avant-garde
and decanters, ashtrays, smoking accessories, vases, perfume bottles, architecture. The pavilion’s open staircase was unprecedented. The
and vanity table accessories to send back home and to give as gifts, glasswork, laid out in flat sheets, stood vertically adjacent to the stairs,
creating a consumer market for his brand in the U.S. that reached its allowing visitors to view the entire contents of the building’s interior
peak at the start of the second world war. (its stands, internal layout, and displays) from its steps.

In 1925, Lalique took part in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. It is a triumph of Art Deco
and the high point of René Lalique’s glass production. In working the material, his style expresses itself principally through what would become
the famous contrast between the transparent and satin finish. He occasionally adds a patina, enamel, or mass color.

20 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles