Friday, 3 April 2020

4 April: Art Deco

Today is Art Deco Day. Here are ten things you might not know about Art Deco.

Napier, New Zealand
  1. First of all, what is it? It's a style of architecture and art that was popular from the mid 1920s to the mid 1940s. There are Art Deco buildings in almost every country in the world.
  2. It originated in France. Hence the name is derived from a French phrase, “Art decoratif”.
  3. French artists were exhibiting works in an Art Deco style as early as 1905.
  4. It's said to have been influenced by cubism and modernism.
  5. In architecture, it was used for public buildings rather than houses, incorporating the idea that buildings could be streamlined as you would a car for aerodynamics. Shiny metals and bold geometric patterns are characteristic of Art Deco – think the Chrysler Building in New York.
  6. It wasn't just for buildings. Cars, jewellery, furniture and clothing has also been made in Art Deco style.
  7. There are even fonts in Art Deco style which are used to evoke that era of history.
  8. Miami in Florida has a whole district, the Miami ArtDeco District, in South Beach, where you can find around 800 examples of Art Deco structures. You can even take a walking tour of the area.
  9. In  London much of the surviving Art Deco designs can be found on the London Underground. Stations, tunnels and arches are often Art Deco. There's also the Hoover Building in West London.
  10. Napier, a town in New Zealand (see picture above), was nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its Art Deco buildings. Most of the town's architecture is Art Deco, because the town was levelled by an Earthquake in 1931, and was rebuilt in what was then the fashionable style.


My Books 

(for more details and buying options Click Here)


The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

















The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.













Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...













Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.
















Short story collections


Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny. 


















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