A decorative delight of contemporary objets d’art, ID Special Project NEO DECO is a reminder that the brilliance of Deco lies not in memory, but in reinvention
Few design languages possess the clarity and confidence of Art Deco. Born from an age of progress, it fused geometry with ornament, structure with sensuality, and industry with craft. More than a style, it was an attitude: adaptable, modern, and enduring. NEO DECO, under ID Mumbai 2025’s Special Projects, builds on this spirit, bringing together designers and artists who treat Deco not as nostalgia but as a living language that continues to inspire through precision and beauty.
Through NEO DECO, the movement’s essence is reinterpreted across furniture, lighting, textiles, and artefacts. Curated by Misha Bains, Fair Director of India Design ID, the exhibition explores geometry, symmetry, and material refinement through a contemporary lens. Some works emphasise proportion and restraint; others express opulence through texture and craftsmanship. Together, they reaffirm why Deco remains one of design’s most versatile expressions, constantly evolving to reflect new ideas of form, function, and elegance.
The Classical Expression
With their silhouettes and sculptural balance, works such as DeMuro Das’ Maske Console capture ceremonial geometry through cast bronze and stone, while Vikram Goyal’s Strand Side Table celebrates vertical rhythm in fluted brass. The Vernacular Modern’s Bale Asandi chair and stool duo expresses verticality and curves through brass and velvet, marrying craft with proportion. The bold gestures and ornamentation are clearly referenced in Beyond Designs’ The Gilded Elephant, just as Diwiks’ Radiogram, with repeating lines, restrained proportions, and brass inlay accents, nods to the era.
Elsewhere, Deco appears as a pattern: repetition, rhythm, and tactile precision. IDLI by Thierry Journo’s Draped Vase indulges in striped surface play, while the upholstery of PINTO’s Lodge Armchair reflects a tessellation of small motifs. The sawtooth and diamond arrangement of Ateliers Courtin’s tapestry, in contrast to the hemispherical shapes across Jaipur Rugs’ Aakar rug, both translate Deco-reminiscent patterns into woven cadence.
A City’s Legacy
Honouring Deco through place, several works are anchored by the architecture of Indian cities. Gallery 47-A highlights artist Jit Chowdhury’s Urban Patchwork relief that reinterprets Kolkata’s facades through indigo and alta on sholapith canvas, while Tania and Sandeep Khosla’s Gopuram Lamp abstracts decorative facades of South Indian temples in fluted marble.
Home to the second-largest collection of Art Deco buildings, Mumbai is a prime source of inspiration, as reflected in Amba’s Bombay Wave tapestry hung on a wooden frame by SHED. Similarly, PortsideCafe Furniture Studio’s armchair showcases facades, chevrons, ziggurats and architectural silhouettes that surround Mumbai’s Queen’s Necklace, as does Alex Davis’s Bombay wall installation. Transporting us back in time, Chiki Doshi’s refurbished Bombay Art Deco Sideboard showcase the fine carpentry and form cultivated in the past.
As Spirit and Story
Many designers revisit Deco through the lens of traditional Indian craft practices, treating surface as cultural memory. Peter D’Ascoli’s SANGAM reinterprets its opulence through artisanal labour, material integrity, and the evolving language of ornamentation, while Stephen Cox for KAASH’s Bidri Jug revives Deccan metalwork in measured proportion. Amit Hansraj’s Love is a Verb framed artwork, in collaboration with TAKE ON Design, renders the residues of block-printing into form.
Technique becomes expression, not embellishment, in both Built Editions’ Lac Tapestry that arranges Channapatna wooden beads into radiant geometry and Gunjan Gupta’s Dhokra Dolls. Similarly, Rooshad Shroff’s Marble Inlay Lamp that uses hand-cut Makhrana marble to echo Deco’s devotion to craft integrity, while David Joe Thomas for KAASH’s Kasera 2 converts the charpai weave from Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu, into modular symmetry.
Light and Shadow
Reflection and hue are central to Deco’s drama. Ashiesh Shah’s Matka Mirror breaks the vessel into mirrored quadrants, creating reflective architecture in miniature. Sona Reddy’s set of three Le Nid lamps glows through handcrafted Dhokra, as does Siddharth Kerkar’s Pepper Lamp through beaten copper. Mathieu Lustrerie’s Jellyfish Chandelier closes this sequence in pure spectacle: bronze, crystal, and light entwined.
In a more contemporary ode, Shakti Design Residency’s Kickie Chudikova’s Vista Lamp, in collaboration with klove, uses concentric glass to stage controlled luminosity, while French art studio YMER & MALTA’s set of Aspherical Skylights transform oak and LED into hypnotising atmospheres. Both klove & collektklove’s Art Deco Floor Lamp and Andrea Anastasio for KAASH’s Ladder Light reveal that illumination remains Deco’s most seductive form of order.
Streamlined Modernity
Defined by form, Ravi Vazirani’s set of two Stacked Scalloped Cone sconces punctuates the walls with their interpretation of bold geometry with subtlety and tactility. An audience favourite, Jagdish Sutar’s Grain of Time bar cabinet embraces verticality and geometry as a contemporary expression that is architectural and layered. Design Temple’s Cirque du Soleil flatpack table stands as testimony to the borrowing of recognisable references.
Material exploration anchors much of NEO DECO. André Teoman and Scarlet Splendour’s Adamastor Cabinet, in resin and brass, blends the baroque piece with bold contours, refined finishes, and traditional Deco elements. KOY’s Paisley Dining Table, hand-carved Indian onyx marble, breathes cosmopolitan elegance. Letting architecture speak volumes, both Linda Freya Tangelder for æquō’s SLABS Treasure Box with its hammered silver exterior and Paul Matter’s Hug Lamp with its corten steel embrace Deco’s material authenticity.
Viewed together, these works reveal how Art Deco continues to evolve, not as nostalgia, but as a framework for renewal. Across material, form, and technique, each piece reinterprets its defining ideals of order, balance, and ornament through contemporary sensibilities. The style endures because it adapts, finding new relevance in every era that dares to see beauty as discipline, and precision as imagination.
Text by Tanvee Abhyankar
