Art Nouveau is more than just a style.
Translated from French to English it means New Art - but it is more than just that..

In fact that is what the Art Nouveau movement was all about.
Unlike some styles, Art nouveau incorporated glass,silver,stained glass,posters,furniture,jewellery,Art,Metalwork,Pottery ,bronze and other sculpture and textiles.All artistic forms were influenced (although some discarded the movement as unworthy ! Strangely enough their work is usually unrecognised today .)

It was more a way of thinking and designing than slavish copies of a common theme.
Naturalistic themes were common but even these were transformed into dream-like pieces with an air of fantasy and other-worldliness.
Some of the motive forces behind the movement were the leaders in their fields.
Alphonse Mucha for his Art and Posters, Klimt for his gorgeously rich
works of Art, Rene Lalique for his fantastical jewelry and exquisite glassware. (I just LOVE his Dragonflies - perhaps because I have them in my garden !)
All of these are now household names and highly collectable.
Potters joined in with amazing designs as did silversmiths with curved and flowing jewelry.

Rings,Necklaces and bracelets in Art Nouveau designs became the highly desired pieces of jewelry that any fashionable lady of the turn of the 19h Century needed to own to stay in fashion.
Actresses and Royalty took up the style and this filtered down to almost every European and American woman.
Sarah Bernhardt alone was a huge influence by advising Lalique to produce his fantasy designs in Jewelry.
The main difference was exactly that the designs were SO very different - very strange - unearthly in fact.
By picking up hints of fairyland,mermaid,niads or nymphs were incorporated into a fantasyworld unequalled even today..
Before all of theses fields were very traditional and mainly unchanged for many years before.

It was the genius of these designers that altered the perception that everyday objects and Jewels did not have to be exactly as nature designed them or indeed as they are viewed in the real world
The movement was widely copied and altered so that similar changes took place in the countries of Germany,Austria and America where artists adapted art nouveau designs to mesh in with ther own work.
Jugendstihl in Germay brought forth art nouveau fantastical pottery and the movement made huge inroads into jewellery design with companies like Liberty in England and numerous french silversmiths working hard to catch up with the demand from excited customers.

Without the Art Nouveau movement we would have lost many delights in what we term as the real world !.
(But which IS the real world ? )