A book reviewer once described Arnold Schwartzman as “a trufflehound with a Nikon�, praising his passion and inquisitive eye. In Miami Art Deco, Schwartzman's sixth photographic book on Art Deco architecture, he turns his lens on the tropical sun-bleached facades of Miami Beach’s pastel palaces. Following the devastating Miami hurricane of 1926, a square-mile of Miami Beach was redeveloped in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and the Miami Beach Architectural Historic District (known as the Art Deco area) now encompasses over eight hundred buildings and is the largest concentration of art deco architecture in the world.  Schwartzman's stunning photography captures many of these unique buildings, from the hotels and nightclubs of Ocean Drive to the Miami Post Office, all heavily influenced by the sea and nautical life. This book of Deco delights should prove to be a delicious sundowner for the connoisseur of the Art Deco style.

The art of its architectural details. With the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Moderne, the city of Paris heralded in the New Era. Paris was the cradle of Art Deco, a style that emerged in the 1920s as a reaction to the sinuous tentacles of Art Nouveau in the early 1900s, and an alternative to the Machine Age imagery emerging from Germany and the Soviet Union. The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels was intended to revive the French luxury trades and it popularized a jazzy style of decoration that drew on many sources and expressed the spirit of the age. The Expo later gave its name to Art Deco which achieved some of its most refined and exuberant manifestations in Paris, while rapidly spreading across the world, from London to Los Angeles. Born into the Art Deco Age, author/photographer Arnold Schwartzman has savoured his many visits to Paris, and is now eager to share with the reader his journey through the boulevards of La Ville Lumiere.

A return to Camelot This is the second volume of Arnold Schwartzman’s trilogy on the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th Century, in which he focuses on a group of British craftsmen who decided to turn their backs on the mass production of the Industrial Revolution to form a ‘Round Table’ in order to establish a means of returning to hand-crafted products. William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and in America, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Greene and Greene were among these like-minded artisans who wished in essence to create a movement which embodied a vision and style that returned to the Golden Age of craftsmanship.

The Art Deco style gained prominence at the 1925 Paris Exposition, after which each nation seemed to adapt its own distinct architectural style. Less florid than the French or that of the United States, Great Britain s buildings reflected the country s imperial status. From the imposing style of the Savoy Hotel, through the ornate detail of the West End theatres, to Art Deco factories like the Hoover Building, they also demonstrated Britain s love of detail. Remarkably, many of London's Art Deco buildings still survive their once grime-covered indigenous Portland stone now mostly scrubbed clean, beautifully displaying their many sculptural details. This richly illustrated book offers a fascinating and detailed look at the Art Deco style from building design to decorative detail.