Couched in History

Living Rooms explores the past, present and future of domestic life.

Where would the living room be without the sofa?

Over the centuries, the amount and the kinds of furniture people use have changed radically. Prior to the 17th century, for example, European homes were not heavily furnished, and most of the types of furniture found in homes today did not yet exist.

Then, in the half-century from roughly 1670 to 1730, virtually every kind of furniture now common in Western homes was invented. Some of these designs, like the armchair, had existed in antiquity or in Eastern cultures, but the anonymous 17th-century European craftsmen who re-imagined them undoubtedly had no knowledge of any precedent to their creations.

Even the most minimalist living room today includes two pieces that these craftsmen invented: the sofa and the occasional table. Until then, seating had been limited. Only trunks, benches and beds provided room for more than one person to sit. And even wealthy families used one large table for everything from eating to writing. By the early 18th century, however, many small tables had become available, each designed for a particular activity. And sofas in dozens of styles had been invented.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Reading and writing table, France, 1670-1675.

This is perhaps the earliest known occasional table. Made for a French royal château, it is tiny — only two feet high and just over a foot wide — and intricately veneered with exotic woods, ivory and painted horn.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Reading and writing table with its top raised.

The table was designed to facilitate reading, as well as an activity that was then becoming a major part of daily life: letter writing. The hinged top lifts up to provide an angled stand for a book or paper; a tiny locking drawer has compartments for writing materials. By the early 18th century, occasional tables of various kinds were found in many homes — from night tables to card tables.

The task table was invented quickly, but the sofa took longer to figure out. Craftsmen on both sides of the English Channel tried out many prototypes before inventing sofas that resemble the models we use today.

V and A Images Settee, England, 1690-1700.

This may be the earliest surviving sofa: it was made in England in the 1690s in a style that would long remain popular there, referred to as “double Windsor chairs without a division.”

V and A Images Settee, side view.

This piece still has its original upholstery, beautifully designed but so skimpily padded that it would not have provided a comfortable seat.

On the continent, French craftsmen dominated production. None of the first French sofas has survived, but we do have prints that were created to advertise new designs to people from all over Europe who wanted to furnish their homes in the modern style.

Patrick Lorette, Courtesy of Joan DeJean “Woman of Quality on a Canapé.“ Engraving, French, 1686.

This is the earliest image of a sofa: it shows a prototype that was in production in 1686 — a low-backed style called a canapé (still the most common French term for sofa). Two years later, a Parisian craftsman described himself as “a specialist in sophas.” Soon, many styles were called sofa or sopha (from the Arabic for cushion).

Patrick Lorette, Courtesy of Joan DeJean “Madame de *** as Mary Magdalene.” Engraving, French, c. 1690.

This design, a variant on the double armchair style and just as lightly padded, was short-lived in France. As craftsmen invented new tools and techniques for carving or sculpting wood, along with almost all the tricks of modern upholstery, sofas became more sophisticated – and comfortable.

Patrick Lorette, Courtesy of Joan DeJean “Madame la Princesse de Rohan.” Engraving, French, 1696.

The model depicted here has an elaborately carved frame and upholstery that is nicely rounded on all surfaces for increased support and comfort.

These prints also show off something that evolved along with the new furniture, a kind of sofa attitude. The ladies drape their arms over the back, stretch out their legs, tuck up their feet — hardly conventional poses for noblewomen of the 1690s. The images seem to suggest that sofas could make people freer, more relaxed, sexier even.

After so much build-up, sofas naturally provoked some extreme reactions. Some people went sofa-mad and had them in every room of the house, often several to a room. German visitors to the French court, on the other hand, complained that “it no longer looked like a court” because you saw people “stretched out full-length on sofas.” When Horace Walpole quipped that sitting on a sofa was like “lolling in a péché mortel” — a mortal sin — he was poking fun at some of his fellow countrymen, who worried that overly plush seating might prove a dangerous thing.

Today, some dismiss sofas as banal and overused, while the decorator Nate Berkus says that every living room should be built around the perfect sofa.

More than 300 years after Europeans discovered it, the sofa thus remains the one piece of furniture that never simply disappears into the woodwork.

Joan DeJean is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual — and the Modern Home Began.”

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