CFDA Newsletter

Announcements:

Election ballets have been cast for the next year's Board members!
Results to be published in the next newsletter.

Program Schedule:

October 13: Hans Wegner: Foremost Danish Designer
John Kriegshauser will talk
about the work of Hans Wegner and his roots in the Danish modern design movement.

November 10: Your Business; Your Taxes.
Lisa Brophy, who is on our board and
serves as the CFDA attorney, will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of
various forms small businesses such as ours might take and the tax advantages of
each.

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Minutes - September 8th, 2009

Fifteen members in attendance.

Chris Brandel called the meeting to order at 7:15, beginning with the upcoming Milwaukee Fine Furniture and Furnishings show. Plans are going swimmingly, and there are still some timing and logistical details that have to be worked out. While it's unfortunate that the Rising From Ashes show couldn't be held along with the FF&F show, it will be taking place during the same weekend at Design Within Reach, in Milwaukee's trendy new Third Ward district.

We have reduced our commitment at the FF&F show from six booths down to four. As of this writing there are approximately fifteen makers who will be in the show.

Delivery is to take place on Friday, October 2, with a VIP cocktail party that evening at the event from 6-8PM. It requires a $50 admission fee, which will go to the local ASID scholarship fund.

We now have the ability to take PayPal on our website to take membership dues. At this time it's not set up to accommodate show fees. Changes to that are on a TBA basis, if at all. Please contact Lloyd Natof with questions.

Hal Link mentioned that his building, located at the corner of 35th and Racine, is holding an open house for Artists Month on October 16, 17 and 18. The RFA show is cordially invited, and will be able to set up in a generous open space. If interested, please contact Hal at 312-560-9251.

Many thanks go to Celia Greiner, who has agreed to take over newsletter editorial duties from outgoing Rob Frasier. Rob is retiring from both the CFDA and furniture, to enjoy a new phase of life.

Dwayne Sperber has agreed to be on point for new shows, and is always eager for motivated help to further the effort. His recent work in securing the FF&F show, as well as Design Within Reach, have been greatly appreciated. If you have any suggestions for shows or possible venues, please contact Dwayne.

Dolly mentioned that there is a possibility for a joint show with the IDSA to be held in the Willis Tower (formerly: Sears Tower). Timing and exact details are a bit far on the horizon to see with any clarity. But we do know that the general topic will be Green construction.

And recently we discovered that the CFDA needs to resubmit its articles of incorporation with the State.While on its face it could sound alarming that we've lapsed, this is actually a very good thing. Steps are about to be taken to make us into a 501-3-C nonprofit designation, which would make us eligible for grants of all sorts. Chris Brandel reported that this will be efforted in the coming weeks.

On a somewhat more serious note, Tor Faegre's declining health issues were tabled. He's reportedly been moved from the hospital environment to a home hospice. The CFDA is casting out for good ideas for ways to extend our affection and respect to a man who's been a stalwart member of the group. Please contact John Kriegshauser if you have any good ideas.

And finally, election ballets have been cast for the next year's Board members. Results to be published in the next newsletter.

The business meeting ended at 8:02

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Program:
Matt Seiler
Biedermeier: A domestic reaction to social repression.

As the first of a series of studies of historic styles, Matt covered the many aspects of Biedermeier furniture and decor. Biedermeier is a style that was dominant in the Germanic and Austrian areas in the first half of the 19th Century.

In order to place the style into a historic perspective, we discovered that Biedermeier can trace its inception and its end directly to socio-political history. In fact, we can point to a military defeat of one man for its beginnings and the death of another man for its ending. But a brief bit of history must be covered to grasp the WHY of the thing.

With the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1814 the world heard a collective exhale among the citizens of Europe. Among other things, the French Empire style of furniture and interior design, which was forceably plastered over local styles with the invasion of the French army, suddenly was able to be thrown out with the bath water. Concurrently, King Franz I of Austria, and his 'hammer', Lord Chancellor Clemens von Metternich, began a systematic program of social repression. Von Metternich's secret police, with their arrests and incarcerations, made it impractical for people to gather in any significant numbers in public. And so we see a wholesale retreat back into the household as a result.

Since the populations were forced to live and gather in their spare and modest apartments we see the evolution of 'decor' in a way not seen previously. Rooms were bright and cheerful. And they needed to be arranged so that the rooms could be multi-functional over the course of the day. Literary circles, sewing clubs and gentlemen's meetings all needed to follow one another over the day. And so the furniture was meant to be portable, was smaller in scale and proportion than the Empire style, and we see seating as a major requirement in the rooms.

The spaces, themselves, became terribly important to the family. It wasn't uncommon to see people commission watercolors of just the rooms, sans people.

And within these rooms we see an abundance of beautiful furniture forms. At the time this furniture was considered spare and reserved. By today's standard it's spectacular, sporting florid burls, crotches and patterns in veneer. But in the day this was considered a quieter, more modest form than the oft-guilded and highly ornamental Empire pieces.

Matt shared a collection of images from four main categories: seating, armoires, tables and desks. And in these photos we see an evolution between early and late Biedermeier work. Thanks to the travels of Napoleon into places like Egypt, Rome and Greece, the European countries began a fascination with NeoClassical motifs. So early work in the Biedermeier style sported statue-like images incorporated into arms and legs of chairs, or columns with guilded tops and bottoms incorporated into case work. By the late period that fascination seems to have worn off. But in the world of seating, we seem to see the Greek lyre as a very common motif in back splats.

Seating dominated the interiors. Photos of period rooms show rooms with ten to twelve chairs, many left to march left to right along the wall. Bankettes were popular, as were highly ornamental couches. It was all upholstered in vibrant colors and patterns.

Large round tables, used for work earlier in the day, inevitably needed to have tilting tops, allowing the tables to be parked against the wall while the room gave way to other activities. But never let it be said that the tables were plain. The bookmatched and starburst patterns shown on a dozen-odd tables was just spectacular.

Desks seemed to fall into feminine and masculine forms. The ladies' writing desks shown were sinuous and curvy, wrapped in a dizzying figure such as Carpathian elm burl. While the masculine desks seem to bear more of a resemblance to pianos. They were massive and blocky, with the ability to cover the writing surface with a pull-out and drop-down cover. But still the omnipresent veneer work dazzled the eye.

Biedermeier was a very insulated furniture form. It flourished from around 1814 to 1849. During that time there were brief periods where bursts of travellers could bring in new ideas. This was due mostly due to the change in neighboring countries' leaders (and thus the border crossing privelages). But it was in fits and starts. So we see an injection of some new forms in and around 1830, and again in the late 1840's. Likewise, we see Biedermeier taking a bit of a toehold in places like Scandanavia during these brief expansions.

Ultimately it took the death of von Metternich in 1849 for the secret police to release its stranglehold on the Germanic Federation and Austria. And when that happened these middle classes, who had been cooped up in their homes for the better part of thirty-five years, were suddenly free to burst past the borders and explore new lands, new styles and new ideas. They had become starved for new surroundings. So it's no wonder why Biedermeier had such a quick demise. They had become sick of it.

Oddly enough, the style had no name until the early 1850's, several years after it ended. Two cartoonists created the fictional character Weiland Gottleib Biedermeier, using him as a way to poke fun of the bourgeoises and generally lampoon their society.Weiland, a popular first name, was paired with Gottleib, or 'God's Child". Thus the puncturing of their put-up piety. And Biedermeier is a made-up word. "Bieder' mean 'plain', in the sense of 'unpretentious', and it was paired with 'meier', which was as popular a surname just as Smith or Jones are today. Thus 'Biedermeier' can be said to be a 1:1 analogy to our phrase 'plain Jane'.

A large scale exhibition of Biedermeier in Vienna in 1896 began the revival of the style. That segued to its revitalization in 1903 at the Wiener Werkstatte (Vieneese Workshops), and that percolated down to the Bauhause and, more directly, into the beginnings of Art Deco. Observers of both styles will see the design DNA evident between them and Biedermeier.

Most recently an exhibition was held at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006, and which then headed to the Louvre. Hundreds of thousands of visitors have seen this wonderful collection across the world.

Biedermeier continues to inspire and capture the imagination of modern designers. Its spare lines and honest construction are a great pairing with its spectacular use of woods and veneers.

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