First Impressions International — Spring/Summer 2001

Art Deco Revisited

The beautiful simplicity yet timeless complexity of the art-deco design has never ceased to inspire and fascinate me.

The art-deco period evolved just after the finde siecle and post art nouveau of Italy, France and America. It heralded in sophistication, communication and the roaring twenties and was "in vogue" for over two decades. It inspired musicals, films, plays, dining, fashion, transport, communication, art and music — especially jazz.

Nowhere was the eclectic, sleek simplicity more embraced than in New York City, indeed rumor and history has it that it started at the Essex House, on Central Park South. Here, the most celebrated gatherings of New York's chic and fashionable flocked for various parties and receptions.

It was with much joy that I visited the Essex House, to dine at that "other" cause-celebre Alain Ducasse. In the Grand Lobby, it is interesting to note the classic and rigidly maintained interior of deco styling and accents. The corridors and flooring reflect vivid images of those halcyon days of geometric cuts and svelte, sweeping gowns, beaded bags, and ivory tipped cigarette holders, as beautiful, ersatz Mary Pickfords or Theda Baras made heads turn and grown men swoon! Music tinkled forth as a stylish quartet heralded your arrival for a Manhattan Sour and a glimpse of Gershwin, Coward, Fitzgerald and the "literati" from the neighboring Algonquin.

The furniture today is still the furniture of yesteryear, the timeless grace and comfort lives and breathes at the Essex House. In the famous cocktail lounge, in the daytime, the Steinway lies silent, but come sundown, it bursts into life, managing to evoke the memories of those deco days of pure indulgence!

As for the piano's emergence as the "instrument of choice" at the start of the art deco period, it is interesting to note that in honor of the art form's naissance, Steinway and Sons has created the Essex range of uprights and grands. Indeed, they herald it as the 21st century's first "new line of pianos." As befits its name, the range imbues the sleek lines and geometry of the classic shapes and carvings of art deco, and is the perfect compliment to those aficionados of the movement that underlined art deco (the jazz age — Duke Ellington, et al) just a few blocks along the park in Harlem. The colors and veneers chosen by Steinway are truly reflective of deco, including black, mahogany, walnut, cherry ivory, white oak and ash.

As Steinway's spokesperson suggests, "The Essex range evokes a time when the intellectual and artistic climate was so prolific."

And as for the Essex House, the parallel is there. Culinary creativity from the hands of Michelin Master Alain Ducasse, an exciting interior and décor of the hotel itself, the memorable echoes of laughter and music of both nostalgia and a New York that still has yet to sleep.

by David Shaw