Antique Swedish Biedermeir Sofas – an ever popular choice for interior design
As fashions ebb and flow there is one constant in design terms that always appeals to design cogniscenti – the formidable antique swedish biedermeier sofa
The Swedish Biedermeier style grew out of copying the French Empire style of the early 1800s just as the Gustavian style was influenced by the Louis XVI furniture from Versailles.
Just as King Karl Gustav of Sweden created the Swedish Gustavian furniture genre after spending some of his teenage years with Louis XVI the Sun King of France, the Swedish Biedermeier furniture style was patronised by Karl Johan the successor to the Swedish monarchy – who was actually french – hence the pervading french influence.
As with its Gustavian predecessor, the Swedish Biedermeier style took elements of the French Empire styling such as the stunning show wood veneers and detailing but simplified it and made it less fussy than its french counterpart as well as adding more graceful curves – this is why Swedish Biedermeier furniture is so much more popular than its German and Austrian Biedermeier counterpart that is so much more angular and heavy to look at.
You find Swedish Antique Biedermeier sofas in sizes ranging form 150cm-300cm and they are always richly veneered usually with quilted golden birch but sometimes with quilted mahogany, cherrywood and other show woods.
The mahogany veneers always have a darker red brown highly polished finish while the sort after golden birch sofas have the much loved honey colour french polish finish that is the precursor to the classic honey colour finish of the Swedish art deco furniture movement – 1920s-1940s – where you have the addition of the classic ‘intarsia’ greco roman inlays like on this lovely swedish art deco desk
You will generally find that the swedish Biedermeier sofas have fully sprung seats topped usually with straw (for the earlier ones) and webbed backs – we replace the straw with a combination of natural fibre, horsehair, cortel and white felt to build the seat to a perfect dome.
The only variant on this is where you have a bench seat which is a plank base with top stuffed seat pad – less comfortable than the fully sprung ones
You can see our collection of antique swedish biedermeier sofas here – contact us for prices with the SF number of the sofa you like