This sumptuous vision in blue silk is so inviting that not only do you want to sit on it, you may want to take up residence on it.
With theatrical scrolled ends, sabre legs and brass paw casters, it commands an audience. From Jane Austen to the Royle Family, the drama of life is played out on the sofa.
It is not quite Loaf-level plushness. In the early 19th century, comfort — an aristocratic construct — was just taking hold in the middle-class home, encroaching on 17th-century rigidity.
Sofas are all about comfort. The word itself is soft and enticing. It is derived from the Arabic suffah, meaning “a part of the floor raised a foot or two, covered with rich carpets and cushions, and used for sitting upon”.
That was fine for Arabian sultans and Egyptian pharaohs, but Romans took lounging to new heights — or depths — placing the sofa in the dining room so they could recline as they gorged.
In the 16th century, sofas were stuffed with horse hair, hay or dried moss. Comfort standards rose with spring upholstery. The sofa became a social piece of furniture upon which ladies could sit back, spread out their skirts and hold forth.
A too tightly corseted lady could find respite on a “fainting couch”, or récamier sofa, named for “Madame Récamier” (1800), Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of a French society hostess lying on a Greek revival couch.
It is just one in a long line of paintings of (usually naked) women reclining on sofas, such as Manet’s “Olympia” (1865) and Lucian Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (1995).
Freud’s grandfather Sigmund, of course, gave the world a very different kind of sofa.
By the 1900s, every home had one. Its central position in family life is cemented in TV programmes from The Simpsons to Gogglebox, while talk shows use it to create intimacy and coax snippets from guests’ private lives before millions of spectators.
Couch, sofa or settee? Couch comes from the French verb coucher, meaning “to lie down” or “to sleep”. It gave rise to the “couch potato” and evokes something a bit tatty. Nancy Mitford claimed sofa was the correct term, attributing the others to aspiring middle-class pretentiousness.
Hyacinth Bucket would definitely have a settee. Nomenclature aside, what is really needed is the elegance of a sofa and the comfort of a couch.
Follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first
"gorged" - Google News
June 25, 2021 at 05:00PM
https://ift.tt/2TVTos9
The home in 50 objects #48: the sofa (c1830) - Financial Times
"gorged" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2L9QNDn
https://ift.tt/2zlBS68
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "The home in 50 objects #48: the sofa (c1830) - Financial Times"
Post a Comment