It was a design movement which transformed the face of Birmingham in the 1920s.

Striking buildings inspired by Art Deco designs sprang up around the city - yet sadly most of them now only survive in old photographs.

To celebrate this key era in city architecture a special Jewellery Quarter exhibition features vintage images of classic Art Deco designs.

Puttin' On The Glitz, which features material from the larger Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) collection, explores the style at its peak during the inter-war years.

And as the city marks its past, the new chairman of RIBA West Midlands pledged to promote good design in Birmingham during his tenure.

Gavin Orton, of Bryant Priest Newman Architects (BPN), said it was vital that what was left of Birmingham's architectural majesty wasn't "surrounded by tat".

The exhibition features pictures of key buildings, including the magnificent Kingstanding Odeon in Birmingham and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Oscar Deutsch, the Birmingham-born son of a Hungarian scrap metal merchant, was an early British cinema magnate whose relationship with Birmingham architect Harry Weedon produced the classic Art Deco Odeon cinemas.

The word Odeon was in use as a cinema brand at the time in France and is of Greek origin, but was appropriated by Deutsch to form the company motto: Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation.

Many of the earliest and best examples of the cinemas in Birmingham and the stand-out Kingstanding and Sutton Coldfield venues still exist today, though they are no longer Odeons.

Mr Deutsch also acquired the Paramount Cinema in New Street in the early 1940s and remodelled it in the in-house Odeon style.

Art Deco emphasised geometrical abstraction, streamlining, floral motifs and has been hailed as capturing the spirit of an age determined to escape the trauma of the Depression.

It inspired photographers such as Dell & Wainwright, John Maltby and Herbert Felton, who's work is also featured in the exhibition.

Contemporaries confronted with this new style during the inter-war years referred to it, often sneeringly, as jazz moderne or simply moderne. The term Art Deco was only coined in the late 1960s.

Many buildings from the era have been destroyed and later generations have no idea how widespread the designs once were.

Mr Orton, 31, who is also the former president of the Birmingham Architectural Association, said lessons from the past can be learned in promoting good design for the future during his two-year incumbency.

He said: "We tend not to promote ourselves too much, I think it's a Birmingham thing.

"We've got huge diversity in the city that we need to shout about. It's too easy to be negative.

"A lot of it is perception. If you can start to lift your eyes up a bit and look around.

"My family would visit from Melton Mowbray and we'd walk around the Bullring, Brindleyplace and they would say 'I never realised Birmingham was like this' and it's getting better and better.

"There are lessons to be learned from time gone by."