Welcome
to DOCANTIC.COM
Looking for an expert in Art Deco & Design?
We offer you even more than an Authenticity Certificate : The Period photograph!!
The DOCANTIC site does not only deal with 20th century decor.
Its aim is to help you to get to know the different 20th century periods, styles and decorators. It is extremely difficult to identify, much less authenticate, a 20th century furniture item, lamp or rug.
Through its user-friendly interface, DOCANTIC will help you to find an Art object in accordance with the features you indicate. If we have the object in our database, a thumbnail image will appear giving you access to an enlarged photo indicating the name of the Creator, Decorator or Publisher, the date on which the object was marketed and the period magazine in which it was found.
DOCANTIC is not only intended for professionals, but also for individuals who wish to locate their furniture property accurately within the world of art, which may be utterly unfamiliar to them. The advantage of DOCANTIC in comparison with other documentation sites is that it only puts information gathered from the documents of the period on line, rather than relying on information from sales catalogues, in which errors of attribution can be observed.
The said documents are none other than the specialized magazines used by the Decorators themselves to display promotional inserts to advertise their items to the general public. These same magazines frequently dealt with full dossiers on fashionable Cabinetmakers; their items were therefore photographed in the hope of satisfying a wide range of customers. Today, these french and european magazines are documents eagerly sought out by experts in order to authenticate the furniture offered to them.
Theoretically, Experts in 20th century furniture should use only these period documents to carry out their research, as this source of information is unquestionable, unless otherwise demonstrated; the photo of a piece of furniture in a period magazine is in itself the item's authenticity certificate. Unfortunately this is not always the case; some do it but others neglect to.
The best-known magazines were:
Art et Décoration - Art et Industrie - Art présent - Arts décoratifs - Décorative Art Studio - Domus - Ensembles mobiliers - L'amour de l'art - L'art et les artistes - L'art vivant - L'officiel de l'ameublement - La Maison Française - Le décor d'aujourd'hui - Les échos des industries d'art - Maison & jardin - Meubles et décors - Mobilier Décoration - Plaisir de France & Image de France - Revue de l'ameublement - Votre maison, Etc.…
These decoration aids were the households' favorite publications because of their richness in photographic reproductions, advice and references. Some of these decoration magazines are still available in our newsagents nowadays, which demonstrates how attractive they are to consumers and is proof of their unquestionable quality.
DOCANTIC is therefore happy to offer you its complete set of documents specializing in 20th century furniture and light fittings, which mainly covers the Art Deco & Design Period; that is, from 1925, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970. Curently Docantic offers almost 4000 photos of artdeco lighting of the XXth century This category 20th Lighting growing day after day and is the most important database in Internet about Lightings. In addition, DOCANTIC offers any of its Antiques Dealer and Gallery Owner Partners who wish to exhibit their items in a site specially designed for them, a bilingual exhibition gallery using the most modern Internet technologies and equipped with search engines and secured payment systems.
DOCANTIC is the first Internet site to offer Antiques Dealers and Gallery Owners a personalized web gallery that can be put on line in less than 48 hours and that can be updated without any knowledge of computer language.
For further information, do not hesitate to consult our "Partners" page and our "Partner Kits" or contact us at contact@docantic.com.
DOCANTIC thanks you your loyalty and wishes you a pleasant visit.
