Blender (furniture)

A type of furniture that was particularly popular in the Biedermeier period is called a blender . These are cabinets with a front designed to imitate the appearance of other furniture.

At first glance, the most common shape looks like a rectangular cabinet secretary (Secrétaire à abattant), with a writing flap above three drawers and a lower drawer above it. In fact, however, these are simply panels that are joined together to form a continuous door. This can be opened and reveals the inside of the cupboard, which is set up for hanging clothes or has shelves (sometimes the top or bottom drawer is actually designed as such). Blenders that imitate the appearance of a chest of drawers (both as a normal, half-height chest of drawers and as a high pillar chest of drawers) are rarer. Depending on the quality of the craftsmanship, the real construction of a blender is only noticeable when you look very closely. In the case of particularly ingeniously crafted specimens, a rod lock was used as the lock for the cabinet door , which sits in the middle of the door - so the key can actually be inserted into the keyhole of one of the supposed drawers (or the supposed writing flap).

Cupboards of this type made it possible to store clothes or laundry in a living room where space was limited, without having to set up explicit wardrobes that could be recognized as such. They were probably found to be more homely. A bureau cover was also cheaper than a real bureau, as no elaborate interior work and no drawers had to be made. However, many blenders are well-crafted and made of high-quality wood, so that it is by no means "poor people's furniture", but rather pieces for the upper class.

literature

• Rudolf Pressler / Robin Straub: Biedermeier furniture , Augsburg 1994, p. 38 (text) and 134–135 (illustrations of examples).