Biedermeier

The term 'Biedermeier' derives from a satirical fictional character — 'Gottlieb Biedermeier,' a comfortably bourgeois philistine — and was applied retrospectively to the domestic culture of the German-speaking world in the years between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the revolutions of 1848. This was an era of political conservatism and enforced domesticity in Austria and the German states, and the furniture it produced reflects those circumstances: refined but unpretentious, functional but carefully crafted, and stripped of the martial grandeur of the preceding Empire style. Biedermeier furniture is made primarily in fruitwood veneers — cherry is the most characteristic, with maple, ash, and birch also common, and walnut in southern regions. The forms are architecturally clear: secretaries with columnar pilasters, sofas with straight-legged frames and scrolled arms, commodes with simple frieze drawers, and sewing tables and work tables designed for the domestic life of the bourgeois household. Ebonized accents — ebonized feet, ebonized column shafts, ebonized banding — provide the only strong color contrast against the pale fruitwood veneers. The overall effect is one of elegant simplicity that reads as surprisingly contemporary. Scandinavian Biedermeier — particularly from Sweden and Denmark — tends toward even lighter, blonder woods and a greater austerity that amplifies the style's proto-modern qualities. Austrian Biedermeier, centered in Vienna, is the most refined and most valuable.