Know Your Sofas: Back and Seat Options

While we have covered specific sofas in past installments of Know Your Sofas, today we are going to cover some design elements of a sofa and their names.

The advantage of working with me to furnish your home is that I can customize all aspects of a sofa to get the exact look we want. And one of the things that makes a sofa a sofa is its width. While this size can be adjusted, so can the depth and height.

Depth is an important factor as it is going to contribute to your overall comfort when seated. Petite and shorter people usually have better luck with a sofa that has an overall depth of around 36" which, after subtracting the structure of the back of the sofa as well as the thickness of the cushion, should give you a seat depth of around 24" or so. Taller families--or those who wish to have a lot of room to tuck one's legs on the sofa to curl up--will do well with a deeper overall depth of perhaps 40" or even 42". However, make sure the scale of such a deeper sofa fits with the room. You don't want to shoe horn a deep sofa into a space that can't take it.

A standard height of a sofa is usually around 36"--I have found that any higher feels like it blocks the flow of the room. There are lower sofas, usually of a modern design, but clients complain that it feels like they are going to tumble backward if it is too low.

The back of a sofa can also come in a few different iterations. One can have loose cushions...

...or if you don't like the fact that the cushions can come off and move around (people with kids often do not like that option since the cushions always seem to end up in a pile on the floor after playtime), one can have what is called a "tight back," seen below.

If you do opt for back cushions, whether loose or fixed (stitched into place), there are options here too! A back cushion can be a square- or T-cushion.

And of course a seat can get a square or T treatment as well!

The right sofa can ground a room and set the stage for a welcoming feeling of comfort.

If you'd like a new sofa, we can make all of these decisions and more (legs, wood finish, nailheads, fabrics, welting, throw pillows) to get you the right sofa for your comfort and style.

Happy designing!

A Bronze Sheep In Sheep's Clothing

There are many items that are icons or legends in terms of interior design: Pedro Friedeberg's Hand Chair is one, along with the Thonet Chair, the Fornasetti etching of opera singer Lina Cavalieri’s face, and a host of others...but one of the most whimsical and inventive iconic design items is the Lalanne Sheep, created in 1965 by French sculptor François-Xavier Lalanne for the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in Paris.

Although they are now known as the Moutons de Laine, François-Xavier’s bronze sheep sculptures were presented at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture with the title Pour Polytheme, a reference to a passage in Homer’s Odyssey which recounts how Ulysses and his comrades blind the cyclops Polyphemus, and escape from his cave by clinging to the bellies of his giant sheep. Lalanne's work is highly sculptural, owing a debt to Surrealism in its whimsy, and highly functional. His moutons serve as either seats or foot stools! Below you can see Lalanne with his wife Claude, also a sculptress whose surreal whimsical work focuses on the botanical instead of the animal world, lounging on a flock. Claude has been quoted as saying, playfully, "They are not furniture, they are not sculpture--call them 'Lalannes.'"

The realistic cast bronze sheep are covered in sheep skin but Lalanne created outdoor versions where the "wool" is cream colored stone epoxy.

Yves Saint-Laurent was an early patron of Lalanne and collected a flock of sheep to populate his library in the home he shared with his partner Pierre Bergé.

Other designers have collected the sheep over the years. Valentino invested in a flock...

...and a Lalanne sheep can be spotted in this image of Marc Jacobs' home.

If you keep your eyes peeled, you can spot them grazing peacefully in so many homes in shelter magazines.

In case you're wondering, a flock of the outdoor Lalanne sheep went for a record $7.5 million at a Christie's auction in 2011...and original sheep go for just under a million. Just sayin'.

Happy designing!