Determined to outshine the competition at the Exhibition, Linke had set about creating the most ambitious pieces he could envisage, and more extravagant than had ever been displayed before. The items he exhibited marked a transition from the historicist interpretation of Louis XV and Louis XVI styles, an interpretation that was the mainstay of his nearest rivals, to something startlingly new and vital in its immediacy. Together with Léon Messagé, he developed a new style for the 1900 Exhibition that paid homage to the Louis XV Rococo in the fluidity of its approach, but an approach fused with the lively flowing lines of the contemporary and progressive "Art Nouveau". The "Art Journal" reported in 1900 on Linke's stand: