The World of Biedermeier

In The World of Biedermeier, interior designer Linda Chase (coauthor, In the Romantic Style) and German antiques maven Karl Kemp explore ""the first great flowering of the haute bourgeois,"" a German era and style named for a cartoon character, Gottlieb Biedermeier, a schoolteacher and poet from small-town Germany invented by the publishers of a satirical magazine. This period, also known as the Pre-March Period, the Restoration, the Age of Goethe, etc., was an extremely difficult time to be living in Europe; stagnant, depressed times were replaced by bloody, frightening times after Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Here, the authors and photographer Lois Lammerhuber present a lavish tribute to the castles, table settings, ""austere and simple"" furniture and master Biedermeier craftsmen such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel. This lovely collection will be devoured by art historians and interior designers as well as by the House and Garden crowd. 200 color illus. (Nov. 2)