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Lot Essay
Displaying a striking configuration of tufting and an elaborate pattern of brass nails, this sofa’s original underpinnings and tack evidence are important remnants that accurately illustrate eighteenth-century upholstery trends. The expense of fabric, imported primary woods and decorative elements such as brass nails and trimmings, as well as the labor required to assemble these components, meant that sofas were prohibitively expensive to all but the most wealthy and sophisticated clientele. Those examples with graceful serpentine crest and front rails and rolled arms have been especially prized by leading collectors, representing the successful interpretation of the Rococo ‘line of beauty’ in American Chippendale furniture.
In 1983 the present lot was sold at Richard A. Bourne in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and purchased by the present owner. At the time, the sofa was stripped of upholstery and found to bear evidence of tack holes along the seat rails in a pattern consisting of two straight lines that border a single swag of nails and which flow into a line onto the arm fronts. It also retained silk threads nailed along the poplar back and sewn onto the linen sackcloth which indicate a line of tufts along the serpentine crest rail followed by two rows of horizontal tufts creating a diamond pattern. Few pieces of eighteenth-century seating have survived with such evidence of sophisticated decoration, though a 1771 notice by London-born Charleston cabinetmaker Richard McGrath advertising a set of chairs with “a Couch to match them, with Commode fronts and Pincushion seats of the newest fashion” indicates that the fashion was brought over from England (William MacPherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (Washington, DC, 1935), p. 152; for further details on the conservation work on this sofa undertaken by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and their upholstery consultant, the late Andrew Passeri, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr. "A Closer Look at Camelback Sofas," Maine Antique Digest (July 1983), pp. 3D-4D, figs. 11-17 and Edward S. Cooke, Jr. and Andrew Passeri, "Evidence from the Frame of a Late 18th-Century Sofa," Upholstery in American & Europe from the Seventeenth Century to World War I, Edward S. Cooke, Jr., ed. (New York, 1987), pp. 112-113).
Other sofas with evidence of tufting include an example advertised by Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York in 1986, one that is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. no. 1985.810) and another that was in the collection of Robert E. Crawford and sold, Sotheby's, New York, 13 October 2001, lot 151. This upholstery scheme also appears to have been disseminated to the Mid-Atlantic States, as seen on a Federal inlaid mahogany sofa from Winchester, Virginia in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (acc. no. 1994-178).
In 1983 the present lot was sold at Richard A. Bourne in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and purchased by the present owner. At the time, the sofa was stripped of upholstery and found to bear evidence of tack holes along the seat rails in a pattern consisting of two straight lines that border a single swag of nails and which flow into a line onto the arm fronts. It also retained silk threads nailed along the poplar back and sewn onto the linen sackcloth which indicate a line of tufts along the serpentine crest rail followed by two rows of horizontal tufts creating a diamond pattern. Few pieces of eighteenth-century seating have survived with such evidence of sophisticated decoration, though a 1771 notice by London-born Charleston cabinetmaker Richard McGrath advertising a set of chairs with “a Couch to match them, with Commode fronts and Pincushion seats of the newest fashion” indicates that the fashion was brought over from England (William MacPherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (Washington, DC, 1935), p. 152; for further details on the conservation work on this sofa undertaken by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and their upholstery consultant, the late Andrew Passeri, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr. "A Closer Look at Camelback Sofas," Maine Antique Digest (July 1983), pp. 3D-4D, figs. 11-17 and Edward S. Cooke, Jr. and Andrew Passeri, "Evidence from the Frame of a Late 18th-Century Sofa," Upholstery in American & Europe from the Seventeenth Century to World War I, Edward S. Cooke, Jr., ed. (New York, 1987), pp. 112-113).
Other sofas with evidence of tufting include an example advertised by Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York in 1986, one that is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. no. 1985.810) and another that was in the collection of Robert E. Crawford and sold, Sotheby's, New York, 13 October 2001, lot 151. This upholstery scheme also appears to have been disseminated to the Mid-Atlantic States, as seen on a Federal inlaid mahogany sofa from Winchester, Virginia in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (acc. no. 1994-178).