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Biedermeier: Art and Culture in Central Europe 1815-1848

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First, the objects speak for themselves -- to anyone who doesn't have an aesthetic heart of stone.

Furniture, utterly functional, embracing clean lines, simple shapes, yet revolutionarily designed to let the natural beauty of the wood be the centerpiece. Porcelain ceramics with gild, but, notably, with decorations of local scenes that celebrate regional things, not just the wealth of the owner. Visual art that centers on the individual, the family, rather than on gods and goddesses cavorting. Tumblers and glassware, pellucid, glowing things that are oddly modern in their strong geometric shapes. This book even extends into clothing (peasant-y details), jewelry, visual art, and even a couple of images of beautiful spitoons which, apparently, were a new and polite development in middle-class homes.

Like the best books with illustrations, the text informs the pictures and the pictures inform the text.

So here's what this book shows me -- Biedermeier isn't a single artistic movement but is rather a complicated, wholesale, and multi-faceted shift. Goodbye Neo-Classical, French, Napoleonic splendor. Hello 20th century.

When I get my time machine, I'm not going to go to the US to purchase Federal furniture. I'm going to Austria and Bohemia to purchase Biedermeier objects.

Hardback with dustjacket, 263 pp, sewn binding. 3 essays. Mostly color illustrations on every page. Index, Chronology, Bibliography, Appendices.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Biedermeier Period in Austria and Bohmeia and its Legacy
Biedermeier and its Semantics
Biedermeier: A Bourgeois Style in the Restoration Period

The Social Ethos
Placing the Objects: Form and Style
The Cult of the Family
The City: Life and Entertainment
Between Nature and Industry
The 1848 Revolution and the End of Biedermeier

Appendices
Chronology
Biographical Notes and a List of Manufacturers (12 pp)
Bibliography (3 pp)