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An Art Deco Villa of Clinker Bricks - Ballarat

Standing amid a well maintained garden of exotics and standard roses with a well clipped lawn, this substantial 1920s Art Deco villa in the Ballarat suburb of Wendouree, would have been for a larger sized upper-class family.

 

Built of honeyed clinker bricks with red and brown feature brick detailing, this sprawling house with its high gables is far simpler than some of its older Federation Queen Anne style neighbours, extolling the clean lines of the Art Deco movement so popular across Britain and her dominions during the 1920s and 1930s. Built in the years after the Great War (1914 - 1918), you can start to see the transition from Edwardian villa to the popular Californian Bungalow of the early 1920s. The overall design is very in keeping with the Arts and Crafts Movement. However, decoration typical of the "Metroland" Art Deco period are starting to appear in the design: most notably in the window design which features leadlight glass, rather than stained glass, in geometric patterns. This is most noticable in the centre bay window.

 

This style of house would have appealed to the moneyed upper-classes of Ballarat whose money came from either the Nineteenth Century gold rush, or from the wool or farming industries that developed post the boom. Comfortable and very English, it would have shown respectablity and not inconsiderable wealth.

 

 

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Uploaded on March 12, 2012
Taken on January 6, 2012