About DecoGnomes
DecoGnomes makes original Art Deco wall art — six designs, three colourways, printed to order and sent out unframed. That’s the whole business. What follows is how it works and what sits behind it, for anyone who wants to know before they buy.
About the name
It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is unremarkable: it was a name we liked the sound of before there was anything to attach it to. There is no gnome in the collection, no gnome in the story, and we’re not going to invent one.
What there is, is the work. The name came first and the prints came second, and the prints are what we’d rather be judged on.
Why Art Deco
Art Deco is the rare decorative style that was built on structure rather than embellishment. Its architecture, furniture and objects worked through geometry — repetition, symmetry, proportion, a line doing exactly one job. That’s why it still looks current a century later, and why it sits comfortably in a modern room in a way most period styles don’t.
It’s also a style that rewards being drawn precisely. A sunburst is a set of rays at a fixed angle. A ziggurat is a stack of steps at a constant ratio. When the geometry is right the design holds together; when it’s approximate, it looks wrong in a way you notice before you can explain.
How the designs are made
Every DecoGnomes design is constructed rather than sketched. The arcs, rays, steps and lattices are set out to a grid, which is why the symmetry holds exactly and the linework stays true at any size you print it.
Each one is drawn at a 2:3 ratio, and every size we sell is also 2:3 — so the composition is identical on an 8 × 12 print and a 24 × 36 one. Nothing is cropped, stretched or rebalanced to fit a frame. The small version is the large version, smaller.
All six designs are original to this shop. They are not stock images, not public-domain reproductions, and not licensed from a marketplace. You won’t find them elsewhere.
Three colourways, drawn from one palette
The collection comes in three colourways, and the reason there are exactly three is that they were designed as a system rather than as options.
Black & Gold is gold linework on a near-black ground — the most dramatic of the three, and the one for a dark wall or a room that wants a single strong focal point.
Emerald & Gold puts the identical gold on deep green. Green carries colour where black is only a value, so it shifts through the day, which makes it easier to live with in a room you actually sit in.
Terracotta & Cream inverts the whole thing: warm terracotta line on cream, for daylight rooms and smaller spaces where black would be too severe.
Because all three are drawn from a single palette, prints from different colourways hang together as a set rather than as three separate purchases. Three designs in one colourway makes a gallery wall. One design in all three makes a triptych. Both were planned for from the start.
Made to order
Nothing is held in stock. When you order, that specific design in that specific size and colourway is produced, usually within three business days, and shipped to you.
This has a real advantage and a real cost, and both are worth stating. The advantage is that every one of the eighteen prints is available in all five sizes without anyone guessing in advance which combinations will sell — so the size you want is the size you get, rather than the size that happened to be stocked. The cost is that a print made specifically for you can’t be resold to anyone else, which is why we can’t take change-of-mind returns. It’s why there’s a size guide on every product page and a note about screen colour in the FAQ: we’d rather you got it right the first time than be stuck with something.
If a print arrives damaged or misprinted, that’s entirely different and we’ll replace it or refund it.
What we don’t do
We don’t sell reproductions of other people’s work. We don’t frame — prints ship unframed, in standard sizes, so you can choose a frame that suits your room rather than one that suits our margins. We don’t ship outside the United States yet. And we don’t have customer reviews on the site, because we don’t have enough genuine ones yet and we’re not going to write them ourselves.
Getting in touch
Questions about sizing, colour, framing or an order go to team@decognomes.com. If you’re deciding between two sizes or two colourways, say which room it’s for and we’ll give you a straight opinion rather than telling you both are lovely.
If you’d rather browse first, the full collection is eighteen prints, from $24.