How does Art Deco differ from Art Nouveau?

Art Deco is geometric, symmetrical and machine-age, built from straight lines and stepped forms. Art Nouveau came earlier and is organic, asymmetric and plant-derived, built from curves. If the design looks engineered it is Deco; if it looks grown it is Nouveau.

Which rooms suit Art Deco prints?

Hallways, dining rooms and bars, where the strong line and flat colour hold up against pattern and low light. Deco work is assertive rather than restful, so it is a poor match above a bed and an excellent one on a wall you want people to notice.

What frame suits an Art Deco print?

A dark or metallic moulding extends the period reference without tipping into pastiche. The work is already geometric, so keep the mount generous and the moulding narrow — our 2 cm Classic and Deep Classic profiles suit it better than the wider Venice or Swoop.

Is the Art Deco collection large?

No, and deliberately. Seven works by one artist, across five sizes from £72.50. If you want more of that visual language, the geometry collection carries 39 works and shares the symmetry and hard-edged construction without the period reference.

How are your prints framed?

Every work is hand-framed to order in the UK. You choose the moulding, the mount and the size on the product page, and the piece is made after you order rather than taken off a shelf. Framed pieces arrive in 5–8 business days. Mount widths run from 4.5 to 8 cm.

What are Art Deco prints?

Q: What are Art Deco prints?

Art Deco work draws on the 1920s and 30s design language: symmetry, stepped forms, fans and sunbursts, strong line and flat colour. Our Art Deco edit is small and deliberately so, at seven works by a single artist, so it reads as a coherent set rather than a survey.

Key answer

Art Deco prints use 1920s–30s geometry, symmetry and polish — not Art Nouveau’s organic line. Use this guide to style the period look, then browse the Art Deco collection to buy.

AT A GLANCE — Art Deco
7 works · 1 artist · 5 sizes · from £72.50

What makes a print Art Deco

Art Deco ran from roughly 1920 to 1940 and it was a design language before it was a style of picture: symmetry, stepped forms, sunbursts and fans, strong outline, flat unmodulated colour. It borrowed from Egyptian revival, Cubism and the machine age all at once.

On a wall that translates into work with hard edges and no gradient. There is very little atmosphere in a Deco print and a great deal of structure, which is exactly why it reads so clearly from across a room.

Deco or Nouveau?

The two get confused constantly and the distinction is simple once you have it.

Art Nouveau came first, roughly 1890 to 1910, and it is organic: whiplash curves, tendrils, hair, plant forms. Nothing in it is straight.

Art Deco is its opposite. Geometric, symmetrical, engineered. If the design looks grown, it is Nouveau. If it looks built, it is Deco.

Where it works, and where it does not

Deco is assertive. It does not recede and it does not sit quietly behind furniture, which makes it excellent on a wall you want people to notice — a hallway, a dining room, a bar or a cloakroom — and a poor choice above a bed.

It also needs a plain wall. Patterned wallpaper behind a geometric print produces two competing systems and neither wins.

Two series, not one set

The Art Deco collection is seven works by one artist, Maja Gunnarsdottir, and it is worth knowing before you browse that it is really two separate bodies of work with different characters. They do not mix, and choosing within one of them is much easier than choosing across both.

The monochrome four

Suwon, Seoul, Osan and Gunpo are square, black and white, and built from hard-edged shard forms with a marbled, almost wood-grained surface inside them. Gunpo is the most tightly interlocked — angular fractured planes meeting across the whole frame. Osan scatters the same shards across a broken white and grey plane. Suwon anchors its cluster to the left and lets fragments trail away across pale ground. Seoul is the loosest, its black forms sweeping and tapering like brushstrokes.

These are the more assertive half. Black on white at this contrast reads from the far end of a room, and because all four are square and share a palette they are the most straightforwardly collectable group here — two, three or all four in a block, with no thought required about balance.

The Golden three

Leipzig - Golden, Magdeburg - Golden and Schweinfurt - Golden are portrait rather than square, and they replace the black with terracotta, cream and metallic gold. Schweinfurt - Golden is the clearest of the three — a large textured gold disc above a cream rectangle, set on an evenly striped ground. Magdeburg - Golden works in fine horizontal terracotta and gold stripes, with a cream panel and a band of gold running across it. Leipzig - Golden is a different picture: a continuous white rectangular band traces an open, maze-like path across a warm textured gold ground, with small terracotta squares anchoring two of the outer corners.

These are the warmer, quieter half, and they are much closer to the actual period than the monochrome four: the stepped bands, the disc, the flat unmodulated colour and the metallic accent are straight out of 1930s graphic design. They also hang differently. A portrait format wants a narrower wall — a chimney breast, a pier between two windows, the end of a hallway — where the square works want width.

Note that the two halves are on different size ladders, so the sizes offered are not the same across the collection. The size selector on each product page shows what is available for that work.

One, or a set

Deco is one of the few genres where a set is easier to live with than a single piece. A lone geometric print on a large wall can look like a sample rather than a decision, because there is nothing in the image to explain why that particular arrangement of shapes is there. Two or three of them together answer that question themselves — they become a language rather than an object.

If you are buying one, buy the one with the most structure in it. Gunpo from the monochrome four and Schweinfurt - Golden from the Golden three are the two that hold a wall on their own, because both have a single dominant form at the centre. The looser compositions are better in company.

Do not mix the two halves in one group. Square against portrait, black against gold, high contrast against low — hung together they read as two ideas competing rather than one collection. Pick a half, then pick within it.

Beyond this edit

If you want more of the same visual language without the period reference, the Geometry collection holds 39 works and shares the symmetry and the hard-edged construction. It is the place to go if the monochrome four are the half that appealed.

Framing

A dark or metallic moulding extends the period reference without tipping into pastiche. Keep it narrow: the work is already full of line, so the 2 cm Classic and Deep Classic profiles sit better than the wider Venice at 3 cm or Swoop at 3.5 cm.

Flat colour needs a border to resolve against, and a Deco print hung tight to the frame looks compressed — so where a mount is offered, take a generous one. The monochrome four in particular gain from white space around them, because the compositions already use empty ground as an element.