While writing boxes are designed for the practical function of housing writing implements such as the inkstone, they are also often consummate examples of lacquer art.

Baroque architects, artists, and urban planners so magnified and invigorated the classical and ecclesiastical traditions of the city that it became for centuries after the acknowledged capital of the European art world.

During the Art Deco period there was a fairly wide acceptance by the consumer public of many of the ideas put forth by avant-garde painters and sculptors, especially as they were adapted by designers and applied to fashionable luxury objects that encapsulated the sophisticated tastes of the times.

Art Deco—the term conjures up jewels by Van Cleef & Arpels, glassware by Laique, furniture by Ruhlmann—is best exemplified in the work shown at the exhibition that gave the style its name: the Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925. The exquisite craftsmanship and artistry of the objects displayed spoke to a sophisticated modernity yet were rooted in past traditions. Although it quickly spread to other countries, Art Deco found its most coherent expression in France, where a rich cultural heritage was embraced as the impetus for creating something new. the style drew on inspirations as diverse as fashion, avant-garde trends in the fine arts—such as Cubism and Fauvism—and a taste for the exotic, all of which converged in exceptionally luxurious and innovative objects. While the practice of Art Deco ended with the Second World War, interest in it has not only endured to the present day but has grown steadily. Based on the Metropolitan Museum's renowned collection French Art Deco presents more than eighty masterpieces by forty-two designers. Examples include Süe et Mare's furniture from the 1925 Exposition; Dufy's Cubist-inspired textiles; Dunand's lacquered bedroom suite; Dupas's monumental glass wall panels from the SS Normandie; and Fouquet's spectacular dress ornament in the shape of a Chinese mask. Jared Goss's engaging text includes a discussion of each object together with a biography of the designer who created it and is enlivened by generous quotations from writings of the period. The extensive introduction provides historical context and explores the origins and aesthetic of Art Deco. With its rich text and sumptuous photographs, this is not only one of the rare books on French Art Deco in English, but an object d'art in its own right.

Editorial Assistant Rachel High explores the advent of Art Deco in France during an interview with French Art Deco author Jared Goss.

By the middle of the third millennium B.C., cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents.

Considered the father of French art pottery, Ernest Chaplet (1835–1909) played an influential role in nearly all genres of the movement.

A portrait does not merely record someone’s features, however, but says something about who he or she is, offering a vivid sense of a real person’s presence.

Like the avant-garde artists who preceded them, these contemporary artists show how wordplay can be used as a means to address larger artistic, social, and political concerns.

Daniel Chester French attained prominence as the leading American monumental sculptor of the early twentieth century.