Images(6)

Sofa

Date1790-1805

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Winchester

MediumBlack walnut, yellow pine, and maple

DimensionsOH: 37" OW: 89" SD: 27 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1994-178

DescriptionAppearance: Sofa with serpentine crest rail; sloping, scroll-form, double-serpentine arms with down-curved forearms; straight seat rails; front and side seat rails beaded on lower edges and upholstered half over the rail; four tapered front legs with inlaid cuffs, stringing, and penciled bellflowers; right and left rear legs curve back at floor level and are square in section; two center back legs are tapered and undecorated; all legs end in casters mounted on flat round plates.

Construction: The seat frame consists of four seat rails double-tenoned into four corner legs, each of which extends approximately six inches above the rails. Two center front legs and two center rear legs are attached to the seat rails with bridle joints. A pair of down-curving medial seat rails is tenoned into the front and rear seat rails. Each side seat rail is reinforced with an inner rail fixed with glue and nails.

Each arm assembly features a scroll-headed rear stile and a shorter matching front stile. Each is dovetailed to the inner face of the corresponding side seat rail and reinforced by the position of the adjacent inner side seat rail. The serpentine top arm rail is set between the scrolled terminals of the arm stiles and fixed with large screws at each end. Four horizontal ribs are notched and nailed into the inner edges of the arm stiles. A large blocklike forearm rail with a down-curving upper surface is set between each front arm stile and the upward extension of the adjacent front corner leg. The forearm rails are secured with screws.

The removable back frame rests between the rear arm stiles and the beveled upper extensions of the rear corner legs and is fixed with two screws set into the scrolled terminals of the arm stiles. The right and left back stiles are tenoned into the crest rail. The bottom rail is tenoned into the right and left stiles. Two central stiles are tenoned into the crest rail and bottom rail.

Materials: Black walnut crest rail, back stiles, top arm rails, arm stiles, seat rails, inner side seat rails, and legs; yellow pine back bottom rail, arm ribs, forearm rails, and seat frame medial rails; maple inlays.
Label TextThis sofa and a virtually identical privately owned example from the same shop are the earliest Virginia-made sofas known. Dating from the last decade of the eighteenth century, they belong to a small but sophisticated group of furniture that is united by shared structural and decorative techniques, most notably the consistent presence of highly unconventional husk or bellflower inlays. Made of maple, these ornaments differ from the majority of American inlaid bellflowers in that they are inverted and consequently resemble fleurs-de-lis. The maker used the design often, varying only the unshaded abstract lines and scrolls he used to decorate their surfaces. The simplicity of the execution and the inventiveness of the ornament strongly suggest that these inlays were not manufactured by a professional inlay maker but were produced in the cabinet shop where the furniture was made.

Other features on furniture in the group include the highly exuberant shaping on several of the carcasses, exemplified by the double-serpentine arms of the two sofas, and the deeply curved aprons of the sideboards (ANTIQUES, April 1990, p. 824). Structural practices are repeated as well. For instance, the legs on both sofas and the ones on a sophisticated oval-bodied wine cooler (Winterthur acc. 57.698) are secured to their respective frames with long bridle joints. Most pieces also used cabinet-grade woods like mahogany and black walnut for secondary framing. The seat, back, and arm frames on the sofas are largely of black walnut, as are the laminated cores of the doors on a sideboard from the shop. Mahogany was used for the interior bottom rail on the wine cooler and for the inner back frames and gates on a pair of half-round card tables from the group (MESDA research file 10,707).

Some of the objects in this assemblage have no early histories, although all of those with known associations are tied to Virginia. The privately owned sofa was first recorded in the 1930s when it was owned by J. K. Beard of Richmond, a pioneer dealer in southern furniture. The earliest known reference to the oval wine cooler is a 1939 advertisement by antiques dealer Joe Kindig, Jr., who described the piece as "of Virginia origin," which strongly suggests that he had acquired it in that state. The best documented history in the group belongs to the pair of card tables referenced above. They were first owned by and descended through the Glass family of Rose Hill farm near Winchester in northern Virginia.

The ambitious and relatively sophisticated designs evident in the furniture illustrated here and the extensive amounts of high quality veneering on some imply that they were produced by an urban shop with access to technology, imported materials, and the latest fashions. At the same time, the maker's reliance on nonacademic proportions, exaggerated curves and details, and comparatively naive inlays all point to a small, probably backcountry, town just outside the mainstream of coastal cabinetmaking traditions. Winchester, where the Glass family card tables were owned, was such a town, and the furniture in this group was almost certainly produced there.

Situated in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Winchester was the principal inland market center for the grain trade that connected the valley's fertile and lucrative farms with the port cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia. The regular communication facilitated by this trade afforded the citizens of Winchester and vicinity ready access to the latest designs from style-conscious coastal centers via migrating artisans and imported goods and materials. That relationship is especially evident in the objects from this group. Although the CWF sofa differs from coastal models in its great depth and width, its scrolled arms, serpentine crest rail, and inlaid legs clearly refer to contemporary sofas from cities in eastern Maryland and Pennsylvania. The sofa's beaded and half-exposed seat rails, unusual in most American furniture, closely mimic those on chairs and sofas from Baltimore and Annapolis where those details were quite common. Baltimore connections are likewise apparent in the cove-molded edges of the leaves on the card tables.

Finally, the upholstery on the CWF sofa may also reflect backcountry production. The joiner who produced the frame and the other pieces in the group was obviously a skilled woodworker, but the upholsterer seems to have been unfamiliar with the sofa format. Physical evidence reveals that he or she used webbing, linen, and stuffing in a relatively conventional manner, while the external trim was applied in a highly unusual way. Brass upholstery nails spaced at one-inch intervals were not set in standard single rows but in double tangential rows along the arms and crest rail. These polished and somewhat expensive tacks even ran down the inside corners of the frame where the arms meet the back and along the bottom edge of the back at seat level. This nailing pattern is especially puzzling since the great depth of the frame undoubtedly called for back cushions and a "mattress" for the seat. Without these costly accessories, the sofa would have been impossibly uncomfortable, even for the largest adults. Once installed, however, the mattress and cushions actually concealed nearly half of the expensive and labor-intensive brass trim.

Inscribed"Sopha" is written in chalk on the front of the crest rail in an early hand. "106. / J. B. Morris, Jr." is written in ink on a linen label that was once glued to the back of the right center front leg. The detached label is now in the accession file.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceThe sofa was given or bequeathed to Historic Deerfield, Inc., Deerfield, Mass., by collector John B. Morris of Westport, Conn., in the 1950s. It was acquired by CWF from Historic Deerfield in 1993-1994 by exchange.

Exhibition(s)