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Some of the finest Art Deco furniture was produced in France, where designers reacted against the Art Nouveau style, and were inspired instead by the lines of 18th- and early 19th-century French furniture.
Cabinet-makers such as Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann
1879-1933) created one-off pieces in exotic woods; others were influenced by African and Oriental art,
while from 1925 the machine aesthetic of Modernism gained prominence, with such materials as tubular steel.

TRADITIONALIST DESIGNS
The leading French furniture designer
from c.19 IS to the mid-1920s was
Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, whose exceptionally fine handmade furniture is an elegantly pared-down version of the Neo-classical and Empire styles, with typical 18th-century features such as tapering, fluted legs. Decorative effect     is provided by exotic wood veneers, sometimes with inlaid ivory, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell. After 1925 Ruhlmann used Modernist materials, such as tubular steel, but continued to work in a traditional style.
Other designers inspired by historical furniture were Louis Sue (1875-1968) and Andre Mare (1887-1932), who in 1919 formed the Compagnie des Arts Francais to produce a range of pieces including chairs, commodes, and desks, typified by massive forms and veneered in exotic woods with carved or inlaid stylized flowers, fruits, and plants. Their designs are heavier in style than Ruhlmann’s, as they favoured adaptations of Louis Philippe furniture of the 1830s and 1840s.
Many leading Paris department stores
had separate studios that provided a complete interior-design service. From 1921 Maurice Dufrene
( 1876-1955) directed La Maitrise, the design studio of Galeries Lafayette, and from 1923 Paul
Follot (1877-1941) was artistic director at Pomone for Au Bon Marche. Follot designed a wide range of  furnishings; urnishings; his furniture, like Ruhlmann`s is based on 18th-century forms, but
is distinguished by giltwood frames and richly coloured, patterned upholstery. Although his designs became more geometric after 1925, Follot continued to prefer wood, gilding, lacquer, and inlay to tubular steel, plastic, or glass.
EXOTIC AND MODERN DESIGNS
The geometric motifs typical of this period were derived from Cubist painting, which itself was influenced by the stylized forms of African masks and sculpture. The
furniture designer Pierre Legrain (1887-1929) took inspiration from African furniture, fashioning traditional designs in Western materials.
The Art Deco taste for Oriental art is evident in the popularity of lacquered furniture, the leading exponents of which were the Swiss-born Jean Dunand (1877-
1942) and the Irish-born Eileen Gray (1879-1976), both active in Paris. Dunand’s early lacquered furniture featured floral designs; his work from the 1920s depicted geometric forms in red-and-black lacquer and sometimes panels of crushed eggshell (coquille d’oeuf). Gray studied lacquering in Paris with the Japanese master Sougawara, and in 1920 she designed a furnished apartment for the milliner Suzanne Talbot, featuring a collection of African-inspired spired pieces. From c.1925, influenced by Modernism, she produced furniture of tubular steel, glass, and aluminium.
The leading designer of Modernist furniture was the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965). At the 1925 Paris Exhibition he designed the Pavilion de VEsprit Nouveau, a stark, geometric space sparsely furnished with mass-produced items such as bentwood furniture by Thonet. From 1926, with Charlotte Perriand (b.1903) and his brother Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier designed his own functionalist furniture using tubular steel and other “new” materials. These and other Modernist designs have been reproduced since the 1960s by the Italian furniture company Cassina.

Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann
•    FORMS simple, elegant forms    18th-centuryforms
based on 18th-century designs, with a very high standard of workmanshipMATERIALS
•     exotic wood veneers, such as Macassar ebony, amboyna, palisander, and amaranth; ivory inlay
•    COLLECTING all work collectable, and highly priced
Marks
Ruhlmann’s work carries this signature
Compagnie des Arts Francais
•    MATERIALS marble tops, velvet upholstery
Legrain, Dunand, and Le Corbusier
•    FORMS Legrain: African-inspired with angular, stepped features; Dunand: naturalistic floral designs, geometric designs; Le Corbusier: stark, Modernist designs TECHNIQUES AND MATERIALS Dunand: lacquering, crushed eggshell; Le Corbusier: tubular steel frames
•    COLLECTING Le Corbusier: modern reproductions
mass-produced by Cassina arc more accessible

After World War I, furniture designers combined luxury and practicality in their products, and created both traditional types of furniture and innovative forms. In France, traditional Art Deco furniture was typified by elegant styles looking back to the 18th or 19th centuries, using inlay and exotic woods. After 1925 French makers started to incorporate the “new” materials
that were part of the Modernist aesthetic, such as chromium, aluminium, and tubular steel — as advocated by the innovative German Bauhaus, whose industrial designers created functional furniture for mass production. In the USA, designers were influenced by both traditional and Modern European Art Deco, using materials such as laminated wood and chromed metal.

In the early 20th century, Dutch, German, and
Scandinavian furniture designers were at the forefront of the Modern movement. Designing specifically for Machine production, they rejected ornament and experimented with the new materials of tubular steel, aluminium, chromium, and preformed plywood, aiming to create standardized, functional furniture accessible to all markets.
THE NETHERLANDS
Among the earliest furniture designs inspired by the new machine aesthetic ere those of Gerrit Rietveld 1888-1964). From c.1918 Rietveld was associated with the Dutch magazine De Stijl (Style), whose contributors, a group of avant-garde architects, painters, designers, and theorists, aimed
to create a new “universal” art based on lines, geometric shapes, primary colours, and black and white. Rietveld’s “Red-Blue” chair, designed in 1918, is one of the best-known expressions of De Stijl ideas. Its straightforward construction meant that it was highly suitable for mass production. Versions made before 1923 are stained, varnished, or limed, reflecting Rietveld’s traditional training in carpentry. Only after this date was the chair painted in red, blue, black, and yellow. From c.1918 Rietveld’s furniture designs were constructed from linear wooden elements; from the mid-1920s they featured flat Wooden planes. Rietveld produced his own furniture until 1924, when he sold his business to his assistant Gerard van der Groenekan. Rights to the designs were sold in 1971 to the Italian furniture company Cassina, which still reproduces them today.
GERMANY
Most of the well-known furniture designers in Germany in the inter-war period were associated with the Bauhaus. Founded in 1919 in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius (1883– 1969), the Bauhaus was one of the first schools to train artists and craftsmen to design high-quality goods specifically for industrial production. It is particularly renowned for the functional, geometric style of its products and its experimentation with new Materials such as tubular steel and plywood.
The best-known furniture designs associated with the Bauhaus were those produced by the Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer (1902-81), head of the school’s carpentry workshop from 1925 to 1928. His earliest designs feature linear wooden components, similar in
style to Rietveld’s furniture. However, by c.1925, Breuer was designing chairs with tubular steel frames, and his “Wassily” chair (1925) was one of the first tubular steel pieces to be produced on a large scale. Designs including the “Wassily” chair and the tubular steel-framed, cantilevered “B32″ chair (1926) were manufactured by such firms as Standard-Mobel Lengyel & Co. in Berlin and Thonet in Vienna. In 1932 Breuer began to design aluminium furniture for the Wohnbedarf furnishings stores in Switzerland; since aluminium is weaker than steel, these designs are more complex in construction than his tubular steel pieces. In 1935 Breuer emigrated to Britain, where he met Jack Pritchard (b. 1899), owner of Isokon (1932-9), which produced furniture in the Modern style and promoted the use of plywood. For Isokon, Breuer designed the “Long Chair”, a sculptural plywood reclining chair that moulded to the position of the body, and lightweight tables and chairs created from single sheets of cut and moulded plywood.
The avant-garde architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), artistic director of the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933, designed cantilevered tubular steel furniture for mass production by the firm of Berliner Metallgewerbe
from 1927 to 1931. Many of his other designs, although functional in appearance, were in fact handmade for the luxury market. A notable example is his padded leather and chrome “Barcelona” chair and stool, designed for
the German pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition in arcelona. With a curved X-frame inspired by Classical furniture, the chair was designed as a “throne” for King Alfonso XIII of Spain for the opening ceremony of the exhibition. Original Berliner Metallgewerbe models are exceptionally rare and valuable today, but since 1947-8 the chair has been mass-produced by the American firm of Knoll, and these reproductions are more accessible to collectors.
SCANDINAVIA
In the 1920s and 1930s, Scandinavia was less industrialized than the rest of Europe or the USA, and
its craft tradition was still highly evident in furniture and interior design. This tradition continued even with the advent of Modernism, Scandinavian designers preferring curving forms and wood to the angular shapes and tubular steel favoured by their German peers. This is well illustrated by the furniture designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), who from from 1929 experimented with plywood for such items as chairs and trolleys, and in 1933 patented a method of bending wood to make stacking stools. Like other Modernist furniture of the period, Aalto’s designs are simple in construction, with no surface decoration, although they may be painted in bright primary colours. His furniture was produced from 1930 to 1933 by the firm of Otto Korhonen in Turku and from 1935 by his own manufacturing company, Artek, in Helsinki. Aalto’s versatile furniture, especially his stacking stools, proved particularly popular in Britain, where it was imported and distributed by Finmar Ltd (est. 1934-5).

•    COLLECTING original 1920s and 1930s pieces are rarer and more valuable than recent versions; many designs were sold to large furniture companies from the 1940s and have been in continuous production since
Gerrit Rietveld
•    CONSTRUCTION linear elements were typical before the early 1920s; planar designs thereafter
•    COLOURS primary colours, plus black and white; early versions of “Red-Blue” chair are unpainted
Marcel Breuer
MATERIALS tubular steel, aluminium, or bent and
laminated plywood; leather arid cane for seats
•    CONSTRUCTION simple contours
construction; chairs and tables made after 1925 have runners rather than feet; Isokon side-chairs and tables are made from single sheets of cut plywood

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
•    MATERIALS tubular steel combined with padded leather upholstery, raffia, or glass
•    CONSTRUCTION Some chairs are cantilevered; the “Barcelona” chair and stool have a distinctive X-frame; careful hand-finishing is typical
•    COLLECTING on early, handmade “Barcelona” chairs the top rail is in bent chromed steel with lap joints and chrome-headed bolts; on later, mass-produced pieces (after 1947-8) the top rail is of cut and welded stainless steel
Alvar Aalto
•    MATERIALS woods, especially plywood, bent laminated (which may flake), and solid birch
Marks
Some Finnish furniture is marked “Aalto Mobley, Svensk Kvalitet Sprodurt”; most pieces have an applied metal label bearing a model number

Bow and Longton Hall
British 18th-century porcelain factories followed their own paths and often aimed their products at very different markets. The proprietors of Bow, to the east of London, responded to the metropolitan demand for Oriental porcelain, which it closely imitated. Longton Hall, in rural Staffordshire, was far removed from the changing fashions of London and produced very individual porcelain with a charm of its own.
Meissen figures, although in comparison with the elegance and sophistication of Chelsea figures, those produced by the Staffordshire workmen hired by Bow were clumsy – as typified by the work of the “Muses Modeller”, an unknown sculptor, whose work, however,
has a distinctive rustic charm. The bright colours on later Bow figures, combined with a strong underglaze blue, resulted in highly decorative ornaments that sold well at the time. The Bow factory remained in production for nearly 30 years but fell victim to an economic recession in the mid-1770s, when figures became unfashionable and the Rococo style that so suited Bow gave way to the Neo-classical taste. The factory closed in 1776.
LONGTON HALL
William Littler (1724-84) founded the Longton Hall factory c.1749 and developed his first porcelain recipe just ust prior to 1750. This porcelain had a thick, semi-opaque white glaze that has earned the nickname “snowman class” for early Longton Hall figures. By c.1752, however, Littler had perfected his formula to produce porcelain that could be moulded quite thinly –ideal for making the forms such as fruit, vegetables, and leaves that dominated Longton Hall’s characteristic, brightly painted dishes, jugs, and tureens. The figures, which are not dissimilar from those of Bow and Derby, show the influence of Meissen. The variable quality of Longton Hall porcelain, coupled with heavy kiln losses, led to the factory’s bankruptcy and closure in 1760. Littler moved to Scotland, where he later opened a new porcelain works at West Pans, near Musselburgh.
BOW
The discovery of Bow’s porcelain recipe resulted from years of experimentation by the potter Edward Heylyn (1695–c.1758) and the artist Thomas Frye (1710-62). They took out their first patent for a porcelain formula c.1744, but Bow porcelain was probably not on sale before 1748. In 1750 the factory was styled “New Canton”, and the influence of China and Japan dominated Bow’s useful wares. Bow porcelain was coarser than hard-paste porcelain and less durable
than that invented a few years later at Worcester, and the burnt animal bones (bone-ash) used as a principal ingredient at Bow created a body that was liable to stain. Competition from rival makers who used
soapstone in their porcelain led Bow to turn its attention to ornamental wares, especially figures. Bow followed the successful example of Chelsea in copying Bow
• BODY soft-paste porcelain containing bone-ash; coarser than true porcelain and liable to stain
• GLAZE soft and slightly blue with a tendency to pool around the base
• DECORATION underglaze, powder-blue ground; blanc-de-Chine sprigged prunes blossom; Kakiemon palette; the “quail” pattern (two quails with rocks and foliage), which became Bow’s most popular design
• FIGURES press-moulded rather than slip-cast, and therefore rather heavy; early figures left in the white, later examples decorated in colourful enamels
Marks
Early Bow is generally unmarked, but after c.1765 this “anchor and dagger” mark was painted in red enamel on colourful pieces that were possibly decorated outside the factory
Longton Hall
• BODY soft-paste porcelain; sometimes, like Chelsea, the body contains “moons” – tiny air bubbles that appear as pale spots against a strong light
• STYLE the factory specialized in colourful jugs, dishes, and tureens in the form of leaves, fruit, and vegetables
• DECORATION Meissen-style flowers are attributed to an artist known as the “trembly rose painter”, although many artists painted in this manner
Marks
No mark was used; pieces marked with two crossed “L”s in blue, formerly attributed to the factory, are now known to come from Littler’s later venture at West Pans