2025 is the centenary of the staging in Paris of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes – a great exhibition of the decorative arts which subsequently lent its name to what became known as the Art Deco style. In the years that followed the exhibition, a great many Art Deco buildings, interiors and objects appeared in Scotland – ranging from tiny pieces of jewellery to the interiors of giant ocean liners.
In 2022, Historic Environment Scotland commissioned the research and writing of a major new book Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age to investigate the extent and diversity of the influences of Art Deco in the Scottish built environment in the inter-war era and in the period since. While this was underway, GSA Exhibitions – The Glasgow School of Art’s exhibitions arm – collaborated in the development of an exhibition about Art Deco in Scotland, both book and exhibition being arranged around nine key themes. These are the architecture and design professions in the inter-war era, Art Deco in Scottish homes, Art Deco in public buildings, Art Deco in transport, Art Deco in commercial buildings, Art Deco for hospitality, Art Deco in entertainment venues, Art Deco in industry, ocean liner interiors and The Empire Exhibition of 1938. The last of these was the biggest British manifestation of the Art Deco style in inter-war era and is also the subject for new research by The Glasgow School of Art’s School of Simulation and Visualisation, who earlier had created an innovative 3D reconstruction of the event and are now examining its socio-cultural legacies for Glasgow.
Resulting from extensive archival research, the book sheds new light on the reasons for the extensive uptake of Art Deco in inter-war Scotland. Against a backdrop of economic decline and international political turbulence, use of the style represented a hoped-for better future. For many Scottish architects, designers and their clients, Art Deco reflected positive emergent continental and American trends and reflected both what being modern meant to them and their aspirations for a forward-looking industrial nation. For the Scottish public at large – who interfaced with Art Deco in its popular manifestations in renovated pubs, high street cafés and new super cinemas, the style enabled temporal escape from the everyday.
The launch of the book and exhibition at The Glasgow School of Art in April 2025 was followed by significant outreach and dissemination work. The exhibition subsequently was shown at the Institut Français in Edinburgh and is to appear in other venues in Scotland during 2026. A key aim of the work has been to encourage a greater appreciation of Scottish Art Deco buildings with the intention that neglected and disused examples may be sympathetically repurposed and restored.
Bruce Peter is the Professor of Design History in the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Design. He has researched and published extensively on modern architecture and design for transport, pleasure and hospitality and is also internationally known as a maritime historian, specialising in the design history of modern merchant ships.
