America, as shorthand for the United States of America, is where all the components of Art Deco came together.

The European Art Deco Movement had come together at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Artes Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. As its name implies its purpose was to bring together decorative art and modern industrial design, but it had the more particular purpose of showing the pre-eminence of French taste and luxury goods.

Architecture was not neglected as each European nation except Britain built a national pavilion. These were in a hybrid of modern and nationalistic styles. (Britain did not see the need having staged the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley the previous year)

The most acclaimed exhibit was the most ambitious project by an individual - the House of Culture by J E Ruhlmann, which had a plain stepped pyramid exterior, with a vast oval room as an interior focal point, decorated by leading artists and designers - a sumptuous and elegant modernisation of traditional forms.

The 1939 World Fair in New York, on the outbreak of the Second World War, represents the culmination of American Art Deco, but the beginning of popular mass culture which reached Britain with the pop music of the swinging sixties and the white heat of technology "when you had never had it so good."

There were a number of additional elements in America which took American Art Deco beyond its European counterpart and brought about the democratisation of culture. While Europe often sought an up to date style, or looked back to its heritage, the United States needed a whole new style as the arts of the past were not only anachronistic but a geographical anomaly.

Art Deco was different from previous styles in that it was fashion led and included the fine arts as well as the decorative, and now the industrial arts. In America it included the new mass entertainment industry known as Hollywood.

Again in America more than anywhere else the fall out from the Wall Street crash created a demand for inexpensive consumer goods. This accelerated the move away from handcraft practice towards a modern aesthetic compatible with new materials, like plastics and chrome, and industrial production. Henry Ford had already pioneered the mass production line.

The Art Deco period also coincided with the arrival of the skyscraper in Manhattan, and the introduction of building codes which led to the stepped shape of these towers - nothing to do with Dudok or FLW. The Chrysler Building, with a chrome top like its cars is the best known.

Another is the Rockefeller Centre, which was also America's first large scale urban renewal project, and contains a number of fine Art Deco interiors by various designers, especially in Radio City.