Great Gatsby! It's Art Deco at the London Silver Vaults.

The stage show Top Hat started London’s current craze for 1930s style. Great Gatsby-mania is now taking off, ‘the Twenties look’ already embraced by fashion, beauty and men’s grooming. At the London Silver Vaults a selling exhibition Art Deco – Silver in the ‘Style Moderne’ gives you the chance to buy original Art Deco silver from the two decades.

The Twenties and Thirties were a delicious interlude when the bright young things of the day overthrew the fussy styles of the past.  In came the crisp lines of Art Deco - elegance, glamour, functionality and modernity, first feted at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs.

Architecture, furniture, textiles and also silverware and jewellery, from Europe to the USA, embraced the clean lines of industry and took inspiration from exotic ancient cultures (Egyptian, Aztec, tribal African) and the influence of cubism and futurism in art.

In silver, Art Deco is all about sleek, stretched shapes in architectural forms, with geometric and stylised detail.  Surface pattern is minimal, allowing the burnished smooth patina of the metal to gleam. 

French designers leading the style were Paul Poiret, René Lalique, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand and Jean Puiforcart.  English silversmiths took their cue, and makers such as Walker & Hall, Atkins Brothers, Carrington & Co, Adie Brothers and Mappin & Webb created wonderful Art Deco tableware and accessories.  Tiffany was the jeweller of the day.

Art Deco design looked good in the Twenties and Thirties and still makes a statement in Twenty Thirteen. Items for sale range in price from a set of 12 cocktail cups in silver plate for £240 (Linden & Co) to a pair of sterling silver tazzas in a Jean Puiforcat design made by Elkington at £6,500 (S &J Stodel).

A Fashionista's Silver Style

We learn from this month’s In Style magazine that Gela Nash-Taylor, co-creative director of Juicy Couture (and wife of Duran Duran’s John Taylor) is a huge fan of The London Silver Vaults in Chancery Lane. “I … adore the London Silver Vaults. I’m a massive collector” she says in an interview with the magazine about her favourite shopping haunts in London. Her house in the country, which was recently featured in World of Interiors magazine, does indeed display some fabulous silver candelabra on her dining table, which look very chic mixed with white porcelain and lots of lovely glass. There is a wide range of silver candelabra for sale at the 30 specialist shops located at the Vaults, from the highly ornate late Georgian ones shown here, to much simpler styles and more modernist, post-war designs by the likes of Stuart Devlin and Gerald Benney. www.thesilvervaults.com