L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts) officially opened in Paris on 18 July 1925. Built in the center of the city, the exhibition included some 130 different pavilions and galleries from more than twenty nations and a multitude of French cities Exhibits were supposed to display the most advanced technological and artistic innovations in architecture, furnishings (wood, leather, metal, textiles, books, playthings, musical instruments, means of transport), theater and gardening and street art, decoration (clothes and their accessories, flowers arid-feathers, perfumery, jewelry), and teaching. Filled with huge glass fountains, Cubistic man-made trees, floodlights, gardens, rides, and music, the exposition created an almost surrealistic, carnival-like setting. Pavilions ranged from Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann's ornately decorated private house for a wealthy collector, to the publisher Cres's building shaped like books, to the couturier Paul Poiret's exotically fitted-out barges moored...