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The Sofa Table
February 29, 2008

I unwrap the deliveries to Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery.  My job is to see that there is no freight damage or hidden damage, that drawers work right on armoires and chests, that upholstered furniture is free of defects, that legs are sound and that finishes are clean and unblemished.  I see a lot of sofa or console tables come in and got to wondering about their history.

I was surprised to learn that sofa tables are a fairly new invention.  The Magazine Antiques  has an article entitled The American sofa table written by Philip D. Zimmerman.

The earliest of the very few surviving references to sofa tables may be an order of July 18, 1801, for a mahogany sofa table that appears in the Estimate Sketch Book of Gillow and Company, a large furniture maker and upholsterer in Lancaster and London, England. 



When Thomas Sheraton published a sofa table for the first time in his Cabinet Dictionary of 1803 he took care to describe its function, explaining that these tables were "used before a sofa" and that "the ladies chiefly occupy them to draw, write, or read." His illustration shows the table placed in front of a sofa so that "a stranger may more clearly see the use of such tables."

By the twentieth century, sofa tables were placed in the center of the living room immediately behind a large sofa that faced the fireplace, the sentimental heart of the room.

Sofa tables started as a flat surface, a standard on each end and a stretcher high under the surface to give the form stability.  American designers tended to put the stretcher lower or almost on the floor and could be used as a foot rest.  Pedastal bases were also used were another innovation.

Sofa tables aren’t just for the room with a sofa.   They can be used in any of our rooms which are larger than ever, where another big piece of furniture just doesn’t fit well. Jesse Akre writes “Sofa tables can be the pieces of furniture that fill this space. You may be thinking you could just fit any table in there, but in many cases a traditional table is simply awkward.”

Now, when I unwrap a sofa table from one of our vendors, I will have a greater appreciation for the table and its relatively short history.

Thoughts??? Email them to me at landfair3554@comcast.net

Posted by Mike Landfair on February 29, 2008 | Comments (0)