2.6 Nineteenth Century Furniture

GERMANY – Biedermeier

The German Biedermeier style of design was based upon functional durability, The Biedermeier furniture incorporates neoclassical styles with the French Empire style, and it was also a take on German peasant furniture of the 18th century, meaning furniture used by the rural population. At first, the name was initially used as a joke, a tongue-in-cheek style of phrasing directed towards the urban middle class and their ideas of supremacy over the rural working classes. However, Biedermeier furniture was extremely elegant, with restrained decoration, and the formal elements demonstrating clean lines, craftsmanship, and medieval characteristics. Lighter woods were typically used, and these typically included black painted details. The curves were contained, and not overly dramatic.

Read: pp. 17-24 & 62-80 in Wilkie, Angus, and John M. Hall. Biedermeier. New York: Abbeville Press, 2006. https://archive.org/details/biedermeier0000wilk/mode/2up

United States

In the United States, an African American designer by the name of Thomas Day was born in a free-community in South Virginia. He set up his furniture business in North Carolina in 1817, and created objects and interior designs borrowing from European movements such as the gothic, and renaissance, and he also created a style that was very much his own.

The American Restoration style, is similar to the German Biedermeier in that it incorporates classical Greek forms within a neoclassical style, but also makes the overall look very elegant, and simplistic. With just a few finishing touches that are subtle, but exceptional. It is described on the Detroit Institute of the Arts website as having “severe classical lines, “s”-scroll arms, and absence of applied ornamentation, the sofa exemplifies the restrained elegance”^[1]

For more reference to the American Restoration Style and colonial design visit: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/day

Pulos, A. J., & Pulos, A. J. (2021). The Arts of Affluence. In American Design Ethic. https://mitp-arch.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/zrqju6vt/release/1?readingCollection=257b6c0b