Streamlined Moderne house in Hamilton NOW SOLD

The award-winning, 1939 'Hambly House' in Hamilton, designed by Edward Glass, has sold since it was put on the market in sometime in the spring of 2012. Click here to learn more about the house itself and its history.

Walking tour of Toronto's downtown Deco skyscrapers

Prudential House (55 York Street, 1929)

On Saturday June 16 at 10 am, award-winning author Tim Morawetz will be leading a Heritage Toronto walking tour entitled 'The Art Deco Towers of Bay Street.'

The free, 90-minute tour will walk past seven high-rise office towers, financial institutions and a department store.

The tour departs from Prudential House, 55 York St, just north of Front Street and the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, and wraps up at the corner of Bay and Richmond Streets.

The tour happens rain or shine, and wear comfortable shoes!

Magnificent chandelier lights up downtown Toronto synogogue

If you want to see wonderful original (or restored) Art Deco chandeliers in Toronto, you could visit the Allstream Centre (formerly the Automotive Building at the CNE), or the CIBC Mellon Building (formerly Canada Permanent Mortgage Corp.) on Bay Street.

Or, perhaps surprisingly, you could pay a visit to the Anshei Minsk Synagogue in Toronto's Kensington Market and see this magnificent chandelier featuring broad terraces and universal fan-shaped Deco motifs interspersed with the Star of David. 

The synagogue, at 10 St. Andrew Street, is open daily with morning minyan at 7:30 am.

Decadent dresses from between the wars

 Do you know how to tell the difference between women's fashion from the 1920s and the 1930s?

If not, then you should check out the following video that features the curators of a new exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver entitled Art Deco Chic: Extravagant Glamour Between the Wars. The garments and accessories on display come from the private collections of Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke, as well as from the MOV and other’s collections.

Drawing inspiration from geometric shapes to evoke elegance and modernity, the fashion design of the era was also influenced by an increased ability to travel world wide – bringing inspiration not only from modernism, but from faraway places such as Russia, Egypt, and Mexico.

The show includes 66 different gowns representing some of the most important fashion designers in the world in the 1920s and 1930s, including Chanel, Lanvin, Vionnet, Patou, and Schiaparelli. Handbags, hats, shoes, and jewelry are also on display to further illustrate the use of geometric shapes to create sleek, sophisticated designs.

Notable Vancouver items include a black beaded gown worn to the opening of the city's Commodore Cabaret in 1929; a red and gold lamé evening dress made from fabric depicting the battles of the Trojan War; and a modest, yet stylish, navy polka dot dress made by the Aurora Dress Company of Vancouver around 1927.

Art Deco architecture across Canada – sneak peak!

This Sunday afternoon (March 25), Tim Morawetz is delivering an illustrated lecture entitled 'Art Deco Architecture Across Canada' as part of the Roaring Twenties Lecture Series at the Bata Shoe Museum in downtown Toronto.

Ceiling of Marine Building lobby, Vancouver, 1929

During the talk, Tim will showcase several dozen Art Deco buildings from coast to coast, including:

Hambly House, Hamilton, 1939

* Halifax's Bank of Nova Scotia
* Montreal's best Deco Roman Catholic Cathedral
* Toronto's legendary Maple Leaf Gardens
* Hamilton's newly restored Hambly House
* Winnipeg's best Moderne high school
* Calgary's dismantled York Hotel
* Vancouver's spectacular Marine Building

This talk is a chance to preview some of the buildings that will be featured in Tim's upcoming book to be published later this year.

Lecture tickets are $16, which includes Museum admisison and a short tour of the Roaring Twenties exhibition following the lecture (free for Bata Shoe Museum members). Pre-registration is required; call 416-979-7799 x240 or email programs@batashoemuseum.ca.

Delightful Art Deco typefaces

Thanks to 'The Daily Heller' blogger Steven Heller – who is also prolific author of books on Art Deco design and the practice of graphic design in general – for profiling some dynamic typefaces that helped define the Modernistic era in a specimen sheet from 1930! 

Check out his blog post to see some other wonderful examples of fonts.