Antique Swedish Biedermeier furniture – a Good Investment?
We are often asked ‘ if i buy this swedish biedermeier sofa – is it a good investment?
The answer is I think – it depends on what you want to invest and for how long. Of course with the craziness of our dear Mr Trump and the worked in general very few things can be classed as both a safe and lucrative investment so it really is a matter of degrees.
Because of today’s ‘buy it cheap with free over night delivery’ amazon mentality culture, the onus is on manufacturers to cut as many corners as possible to keep the price as low as they can. This price cutting has obviously a knock on effect in reducing the quality of pieces being made and then of course their lifespan is significantly reduced as a result.
If you come from the viewpoint of ‘well i bought it cheap so ill chuck in it 2 years and get another one’ – well you get what you pay for. And the planet pays the price for a growing mountain of redundant chucked away furniture that swamps landfills and recycling centres filled with toxic foam and who knows what else.
If you buy swedish biedermeier sofa on the other hand, you are getting a sofa handmade from the finest available materials in old growth woods, properly dried, with a handsprung seat filled horsehair and natural fibre and a delicious french polish finish over a top grade flame or quilted show wood veneer.
To hand make a modern equivalent at the same level of quality and materials would be ludicrously expensive assuming you could find craftsmen to do with the requisite experience and real skills.
A swedish biedermeier sofa would need really dry quality woods that are hard to find in todays quick growth wood culture – how many times have you been to a DIY depot to see beams and joists twisted and bent becos the wood was cut too quickly and it wasnt properly dried? Or have you tried to find really fine quality show wood veneers ( post CITES) at less than a kings ransom?
More tomorrow………….
