Know Your Sofas: The Settee

For this Know Your Sofas, I want to focus on something a bit more traditional and classic since the last many installations have covered very modern pieces from the late 20th century. But it is in a way a very simple post...honoring The Settee.

But what is the difference between a sofa and a settee? Or a settee and a bench for that matter? There have been all kinds of pieces of furniture which function as a bench or settee, going back to the Greeks and Romans. But whereas the citizens of antiquity liked to lounge back on such pieces, it wasn't until the Medieval/Gothic period when a bench on which one would sit upright would be seen.

The image below shows an interior of a house in the 15th and 16th century with a bench and cushions on the left. Even though the illustration comes a few hundred years after the fact, such pieces of furniture were still in existence and could easily be traced to their Medieval origins.

From “Le costume historique” by Auguste Racinet

Then looking back at the Renaissance, we see a piece of furniture come into existence called a cassapanca in Italian, which translates into "chest bench." Often intricately carved, these pieces had a seat on a hinge that hid storage!

Florentine cassapanca at The Met, New York City

Over the next many decades of furniture styles, we see variations of benches, lounges, and daybed sofas. But when we get to the Queen Anne style, beginning in the 1720s and 1730s, we see furniture makers hit upon the idea of joining three or four seats together to make what would be considered a settee with a continuous upholstered seat.

Into the Regence and Louis XV periods, we see settees look more like what we think of when we hear the word settee: a delicate, elegant piece of furniture that seats up to three featuring a padded back and seat, open arms, exposed legs, and an ornately decorated frame. Although during Louis XV, the piece was called by the French word for "sofa": a canapé.

But for me, it is the reign of Louis XVI that shows the world what a classic settee looks like, with lovely Neo-Classical legs and perfect proportions. Et voilà , the settee was born!

Happy designing!

Know Your Sofas Beds: The Lit à la Polonaise

For this installation of Know Your Sofas, I am cheating a little bit. It is actually more like Know Your Beds.

During the reign of Louis XVI, King of France, a style of bed known as a Lit à la Polonaise, or a "Bed in the Polish Style" became quite popular. Why Polish? A similar bed, more like a day bed but with draped fabric hanging from a coronet was seen at the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the shape made its way back to France...it sounded exotic, and the style caught on. The French version was a kind of four poster, curtained bed, except that the columns curved inward--hidden by sumptuous drapery--terminating in a baldaquin or decorative ring or other shape in the center of the bed. The baldaquin was often cloth but could also be a dome of wood or metal. In the exquisite example below, made in Paris sometime between 1775 and 1780, we see a grand feature at the corner of the mounts before they curve inward: a pomme of ostrich feathers. The bed can be seen at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

As you can see, historically, the bed was placed on its side, oriented more like a daybed and indeed, if one sees a Lit à la Polonaise now, it is generally used as a day bed. The first bed below is currently on display at the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris.

Happy designing!