Austrian furniture is furniture made in Austria, with Vienna as its principal centre, and it encompasses several distinctive traditions, from Baroque palace furniture to the restrained Biedermeier style and the innovations of the Viennese modern movement around 1900.
The Biedermeier period, roughly from 1815 to 1848, produced elegant, practical furniture for the prosperous middle classes, often in pale fruitwoods, birch and cherry with simple geometric forms, sometimes highlighted with ebonised details. In the mid nineteenth century the firm of Michael Thonet in Vienna developed industrial methods of steam-bending beech, creating bentwood chairs that became among the most widely produced furniture in the world. Around 1900, architects and designers of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, including Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, created furniture of striking geometric simplicity, much of it made by firms such as J. & J. Kohn and Thonet. Collectors value fine veneers, original surfaces, makers' labels and stamps, and documented designer attributions. Biedermeier furniture blends well with both classical and contemporary interiors, while Secession pieces are prized by collectors of early modern design for their clarity and quality.
