Biedermeier
The style of the middle-class home: simple, comfortable furniture in light wood, made for the family.
Biedermeier grew up in Germany and Austria after the Napoleonic Wars, when the middle classes withdrew into the home. The name was originally a joke about a naive bourgeois.
The simplicity of the style and its care for material have led some to see it as a forerunner of twentieth-century modernism.
Light woods such as birch, cherry and pear
Simple, softly rounded forms with little ornament
Beautiful veneer figures instead of mounts
Comfortable sofas and secretaires