I don't know why this should be, really. Art Deco has nothing Gothic or Christian about it. It's the last great artistic style that had both panache and a sense of optimism and confidence about it. You can look at factories, for heaven's sake, built in the 1930s in Britain, and it's quite clear they were constructed with no thought that the building might ever be used for anything other than making the products of one particular firm, whose name and business are built into the decoration and fabric. The future is sure and we can rely on it. Ah, what conviction! Perhaps that's why I like it - the clarity and futurity are so excitingly at odds with my own temper!
My own home corner of the world, Bournemouth and Poole in Dorset, abound in humble examples of Art Deco architecture. I've become quite interested in how the international Art Deco style trickled down to an unimportant part of Britain - though, admittedly, I haven't actually found out much about that. What I have done is take photos of Art Deco buildings in the area, and here, for your viewing pleasure, are what I think are ten of the nicest.
Click on the little Deco flashes on the map to open each picture.
Bringing together two areas of this site, I recently stumbled across this rather striking set of gold and red Roman-style vestments on eBay (not that I regularly go searching for chasubles to drool over, of course); the photos show a maniple, but unfortunately no stole. In their rather dramatic simplicity, I can't imagine that they can have been made in any other era than the 1930s, and remind me rather of the style of certain churches such as St Alban's in Cowley, Oxford. I've yet to notice any items of ecclesiastical dress that are more, well, Decorative, but will keep an eye out. I decided I didn't really need to buy these, nevertheless!
I often go through Surbiton Station on the way to London, and had been struck by its clean streamlined moderne lines and Deco touches. I finally managed to organise a visit and look at it. Getting out at the station, my first thought was 'Er ...', and wondering whether I couuld reclaim the ticket on the argument that I was temporarily insane while buying it. But a more detailed examination revealed a very remarkable building, constructed in 1937 on the site of an earlier station.
