This graceful sofa, with its classic lines, corresponds with the heading “Soffas Marlborough Feet” in the 1772 and 1786 Philadelphia price lists. The Bayou Bend example exhibits the added refinements of  “bases” terminating the feet and a serpentine front seat rail mirroring the contour of the back. The price lists specify other options such as brackets, carved fretwork, and moldings, although only one known example corresponds to this description. In addition, they record “Soffas with crooked Legs” and “Settees,” the former uncommon, the latter exceedingly rare in Philadelphia. An explanation for its paucity may be inferred from these lists, as the settee is the more costly form.

Technical notes: Mahogany; red oak (seat rails), yellow-poplar (seat braces), southern yellow pine (arm supports), white oak (tacking bar), eastern white pine (medial back stile, crest rail). The central leg is not continuous and is tenoned to the seat rail. The back frame is upholstered as a separate unit, leaving visible the top extensions of the rear legs. The present upholstery corresponds to Thomas Chippendale’s  recommendation: “When made large, they have a Bolster and Pillow at each End, and Cushions at the Back, which may be laid down occasionally, and form a Mattrass.” The original tacking pattern is reproduced. Inscribed on the crest rail, possibly contemporary with the sofa’s manufacture: “1st 1 month 1801.”

Related examples: Examples in museums include Downs 1952, no. 274; Campbell 1975, p. 14; PMA 1976, pp. 109–10, no. 88; Heckscher 1985, pp. 142–43, no. 84; and another notable for its original moreen back panel, in Conger 1991, pp. 154–55, no. 69.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.