Sofa
Maker & role
Unknown, Maker
Production date
circa 1840
See full details
Object detail
Production place
Collection
Measurements
H: 99.5 x W: 237 x D: 69cm (H: 995 x W: 2370 x D: 690mm)
Credit line
Gift, through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2006
Caroline Simpson Collection, Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caroline Simpson Collection, Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Description
Double-ended sofa with frame and show timbers of Australian red cedar (Toona ciliata). The shaped backboard with tall central cresting of classical sheaf and scroll motif, flanked by scrolls and water leaf motif. The faces of the scroll arms broaden into a modified sheaf reminiscent of the lotus form, capped with broadly curved Ionic volutes. The arms are deeply concave at their base to hold the bolsters in place. The concave plain front rail terminates with cartouched corner blocks (decorated with raised rectangular panels with canted corners). On turned legs with gadrooning above waterleaf carving; the rear legs turned but not otherwise carved (indicating the sofa was to be placed against a wall). Covered in a modern green wool damask.
The flared shape of the arms mimics the ‘sheaf’ motif of the central crest, but its use recalls the lotus flower, and gives the sofa an air of the Egyptian Revival, a subset of the wider Empire / Regency style that flourished following the publication of the vast Description of Egypt (France, from 1809), the English victory at the Battle of the Nile, and publication of Thomas Hope’s Household furniture and interior decoration. The sofa demonstrates the absorption of wider influences into the pervasive Grecian style of furniture design in colonial New South Wales.
The sofa reflects the general style of the couch or sofa in the J. Allan lithographic portrait of W. C. Wentworth c. 1840 (V88/173), and has been placed in the second room at Vaucluse House to interpret the generic colonial Greek Revival style of Vaucluse House's bedroom wing, in contrast with the use of the Gothic Revival style for the house's façade, entrance hall and dining room, and use of the Louis Revival style of the drawing room. The setting for this engraving may have been W. C. Wentworth’s town house on Church Hill.
The definitions of sofa (var. ‘sopha’), settee and couch have become interchangeable since the 19th century, with contemporary dictionary definitions largely undistinguishable. According to designs published by Chippendale (the ...Director, 3rd edition. 1762) a sofa is a seat for 2 or more persons often at 2 ½ chair widths (this example, at almost 2 ½ metres long seats three easily) with arms and an upholstered back. The word itself, which appears in the Dictionarium Brittanicum (2nd Edn.) in 1736, derives from the Turkish ‘sofa’, a long padded bench, from the Arabic ‘supha’, the raised bench with carpets and cushions along the sides of a diwan, or reception room.
Sheraton interchanges the term ‘squab’ for couch and sofa, providing a couch design for a ‘Grecian squab’ (The Cabinet Dictionary. 1803, pl. 50). For Sheraton the distinguishing feature of a sofa was its upholstery and reflects the rise of the cabinet-maker and upholsterer in the period 1790-1820, as suggested by the title of George Smith’s The cabinet-maker and upholsterer's guide (London, 1826). Sofas were a generic element in interior decoration throughout the 19th century, part of what Cornforth (1978) described as the ‘Quest for Comfort’. Colonial examples typically follow the Smith / Nicholson form with crested back rails, scroll arms, bolsters and exposed timber on the arm fronts and seat rail. This design, particularly with its concave ends and use of the ‘lotus’ form, is modified from George Smith’s Cabinet maker & Upholsterers Guide (London, 1826. Pl 136).
The flared shape of the arms mimics the ‘sheaf’ motif of the central crest, but its use recalls the lotus flower, and gives the sofa an air of the Egyptian Revival, a subset of the wider Empire / Regency style that flourished following the publication of the vast Description of Egypt (France, from 1809), the English victory at the Battle of the Nile, and publication of Thomas Hope’s Household furniture and interior decoration. The sofa demonstrates the absorption of wider influences into the pervasive Grecian style of furniture design in colonial New South Wales.
The sofa reflects the general style of the couch or sofa in the J. Allan lithographic portrait of W. C. Wentworth c. 1840 (V88/173), and has been placed in the second room at Vaucluse House to interpret the generic colonial Greek Revival style of Vaucluse House's bedroom wing, in contrast with the use of the Gothic Revival style for the house's façade, entrance hall and dining room, and use of the Louis Revival style of the drawing room. The setting for this engraving may have been W. C. Wentworth’s town house on Church Hill.
The definitions of sofa (var. ‘sopha’), settee and couch have become interchangeable since the 19th century, with contemporary dictionary definitions largely undistinguishable. According to designs published by Chippendale (the ...Director, 3rd edition. 1762) a sofa is a seat for 2 or more persons often at 2 ½ chair widths (this example, at almost 2 ½ metres long seats three easily) with arms and an upholstered back. The word itself, which appears in the Dictionarium Brittanicum (2nd Edn.) in 1736, derives from the Turkish ‘sofa’, a long padded bench, from the Arabic ‘supha’, the raised bench with carpets and cushions along the sides of a diwan, or reception room.
Sheraton interchanges the term ‘squab’ for couch and sofa, providing a couch design for a ‘Grecian squab’ (The Cabinet Dictionary. 1803, pl. 50). For Sheraton the distinguishing feature of a sofa was its upholstery and reflects the rise of the cabinet-maker and upholsterer in the period 1790-1820, as suggested by the title of George Smith’s The cabinet-maker and upholsterer's guide (London, 1826). Sofas were a generic element in interior decoration throughout the 19th century, part of what Cornforth (1978) described as the ‘Quest for Comfort’. Colonial examples typically follow the Smith / Nicholson form with crested back rails, scroll arms, bolsters and exposed timber on the arm fronts and seat rail. This design, particularly with its concave ends and use of the ‘lotus’ form, is modified from George Smith’s Cabinet maker & Upholsterers Guide (London, 1826. Pl 136).
Accession number
V2007/13-1:4
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