Lexikon

Glossary

Antique

A work of art, piece of furniture, or decorative object made during an earlier period. According to many customs laws, an object must be at least 100 years ago to be classed as an antique. However, this age definition is very fluid among antiques dealers.

Biedermeier

The term Biedermeier relates to the period 1815 – 1848 in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire.  It was originally a satirical term used to describe this period as being bourgeois, sensible and boring.  Today it is most often used in relation to furniture of this period, which is now highly prized.

“Biedermeier furniture was characterized by simple, graceful, curving lines as opposed to, on the one hand, the straight-line neoclassicism and antique motifs of Empire furniture and, on the other, the baroque or gothic elements found in the historicist style.” Waltraud Heindl in Schubert’s Vienna.

Chaiselongue

“Long chair”

The chaise longue is actually a merger of the day bed and the chair.

The name comes from the French Chaise longue which means long-chair. Art movements in France were reflected in the furnishings as well, and the chaise longue was a popular piece in the Rococo period. The rococo style loved asymmetry and contrast in elements that were unbalanced

Jugendstil

 This style was a contemporary of the Art Nouveau movement and the other related styles that were spreading across Europe. Over the years, Jugendstil has become the usual term to designate the Art Nouveau-type style which developed in Germany and Austria during the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

Shellac

Shellac is a natural, organic resin that comes from an insect, Laccifera lacca. The use of shellac as a furniture finish was introduced to the West in the early 1800s and it remained the most widely used protective finish for wood until the 1920s.  For experienced finishers and restorers of fine furniture the world over, shellac remains the finish of choice. Most importantly, its low toxicity makes it a perfect choice for items that come into contact with food or children's toys.

Engraving

The design is scratched into the surface of a smooth copper plate with a tiny chisel (or burin).  The plate is coated with ink, which is then wiped off.  The ink is retained in the grooves.  When a plain sheet of paper is pressed to the plate the image is transferred to the paper.  Deeper, wider grooves print darker than thin shallow ones.  Fabulous detail may be produced by the hands of a skilled engraver.  The plate may become worn after a couple of hundred prints, and to avoid this the plate may be “steel-faced” or plated to prolong the life of the image.  Hence the term “steel engraving”.

Wood engraving:

Similar to the woodcut, except the design is engraved into the end-grain of the wood, which is harder and allows much finer lines to be produced.  The peak of wood engraving was the latter part of the 19^th century. This was the technique of illustrated newspaper such as Harpes Weekly, and numerous illustrated books.

Etching

A blank copper plate is coated with a hard wax (ground).  The artist uses a needle to scratch through the ground to the surface of the plate.  After the design is drawn in this way, the plate is placed in acid which “bites” into the copper plate in the areas that were scratched through, but has no effect on the areas still coated with ground.  When the ground is later removed the artwork is found to be etched into the copper plate. 

Mezzotint

The surface of a copper plate is first roughened completely with a tool called a rocker.  The image to be printed is achieved by smoothing the areas of the plate to be the lighter parts of the image.  The rougher areas print a mossy black, which is the characteristic trait of the mezzotint.  This process was popular for portraits in 18^th century England and for some copies of art works.

Lithograph

Invented in Germany in 1795.  A wax crayon is used to draw an image on a smooth fine-grained piece of limestone.  After chemical treatment, the stone is inked and wiped.  The ink adheres to the crayon drawing but not the blank parts of the stone.  When paper is pressed to it, the image is transferred.  Lithographs achieve a look very much like crayon or charcoal drawing, though they are, of course, printed with ink.