Although usually associated with the 1920s and '30s, the Art Deco style had already begun to emerge in France prior to the First World War.

However, it was during the interwar years that the style, reaching full maturity, would be embraced across the world as the ultimate expression of modernity, elegance and refined taste.

Art Deco design is redolent of the Jazz Age, conjuring images of society cocktail parties, the Charleston and Hollywood in this great but doomed era of excess. But this was also an age that saw momentous technological advances in engineering and transportation, and Art Deco is a feature, too, of the streamlined profiles of high-speed trains, ocean liners, and aircraft.

Here, TV antiques expert Eric Knowles provides a lavishly illustrated personal narrative and guide to this most alluring and enduring of styles.