Know Your Sofas: Mae West Lips Sofa

We've looked at a lot of different types of sofas in this recurring feature "Know Your Sofas" but probably none so whimsical as our next offering: The Lip Sofa.

A few versions of this sofa were first created in the 1930s. The master of Surrealist painting, Salvador Dalí, had an English art patron named Edward James and the two of them became quite friendly. When Dalí stayed with James at his estate in England in 1936, the pair dreamed up a host of Surrealist objects and furniture to create (including the Lobster Telephone!). The artist has already made a plan for an art work he loosely titled "Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment" in which the Hollywood actress' blond curls became drapery, her eyes became paintings hung on the wall, and her lips transformed into a divan. James was interested in having a pair of these lip divans created for his dining room.

Several iterations were made: some upholstered in pink satin, some in dark red, some with fringe at the bottom, some with a band with nail heads. One of the original Dalí-James creations is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

On display at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam NL, 2017

In 1970, Franco Audrito, one of the founders of the Italian design and architectural firm Studio 65, created an updated version of the sofa as an homage to the Dalí-James sofa. He worked with foam furniture manufacturing company Gufram to realize an iteration entirely of block foam and instead of any reference to Mae West, he called it Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe (who had died only 8 years before). It's now called the Bocca (which means mouth in Italian).

Franco Audrito on the Bocca sofa in 2021, from The Corriere Torino

This elusive icon of design is still in production, available through Gufram, here, in an array of colors.

Happy designing!