Sofa 1745 - 1775

This Sofa or ‘Ottomane Ceintree’ as it is described in the print’s title, was made in France, in the 1700s. The print is the work of an anonymous designer. At this time, furniture design was becoming increasingly formalized through institutions like the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which emphasized the importance of drawing and design in the creation of luxury goods. The sofa's elegant lines and delicate ornamentation reflect the refined tastes of the French aristocracy, who were the primary consumers of such items. But we can see that the printmaker has also included dimensions and a scale to the sofa, perhaps indicating that prints like this were used as a means of communicating design ideas to a wider audience of craftsmen and manufacturers beyond the court. To fully understand the social and cultural context of this print, we can look at sources such as period inventories, trade records, and design manuals to reveal the complex networks of production and consumption that shaped the material culture of 18th-century France.