Biedermeier vs Gustavian Style
ビーダーマイヤー / グスタヴィアン様式
Furniture for the northern European middle class, sharing a restrained neoclassical outline and a bright interior palette.
How to tell them apart. Gustavian is painted over in pale gray white and hangs glass drops. Biedermeier leaves the bare wood showing.
Biedermeier
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Biedermeier is a satirical label pinned on Central European art and interiors of the 1820s to the 1850s, which then stuck as the name of the style. The Getty vocabulary ties it to middle class taste, to uncomplicated and modest forms, and to emotional depictions of people and nature. The name came from those mocking the taste rather than from anyone who made the work.
Gustavian Style
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Swedish neoclassicism as it took shape under Gustav III, who reigned from 1771 to 1792. Its model was the formal classicism of the Louis XVI style, and the king visited Versailles and then brought French craftspeople in to work at the Swedish royal palace. What makes it a style of its own is substitution, since domestically produced glass stood in for costly materials, and small clear glass beads did the work that carved rock crystal did in France.
| Biedermeier | Gustavian Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1820s–1850s | 1770s–1790s |
| Family | Furniture and Interiors | Furniture and Interiors |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Furniture whose outline stays simple, with no carving or inlay laid over it / Plain figured wood facing forward, standing in for ornament / Subjects drawn from people close at hand and from nature, treated with feeling / Modest sizes made for a citizen's room rather than a court hall | A reserved neoclassical outline copied directly from Louis XVI forms / Small clear glass beads standing in for carved rock crystal drops / A little cobalt blue glass set among otherwise colourless glass / Gilt metal chains and mounts left visible as the structure holding the glass |
| Best used for | Finishing domestic furniture or fittings with plain wood surfaces and outline alone · Setting the subjects and tone of illustration or photography about middle class life | Separating a Nordic interior from a French court one, starting with the light fittings · Working out how to swap an expensive material for a cheaper local one without losing rank |
| Type | Keep lettering quiet, using a plain roman at small size and never a heavy display face. | Objects carry no lettering. Where a room name or label is needed, set a fine roman small and place it on undecorated ground. |
| Composition | Symmetrical, with one subject at the centre, and spacing that keeps the density of a lived-in room. | Keep the symmetrical neoclassical frame and build height by stacking tiers. Hold ornament inside the silhouette so restraint of form comes first. |
| Material | Pale figured wood with an even sheen, small metal fittings, and a palette held to about three colours. | Use locally made glass in place of carved luxury material. Build mainly from colourless glass beads, add a little cobalt blue, and link it with gilt metal. |
| Caution | Stripping every last ornament in the name of simplicity leaves work indistinguishable from later functionalist furniture and drains out the domestic warmth that defined the style. | Chasing French court opulence through sheer quantity loses the point, which is holding rank while substituting a cheaper local material. |