Sofa; 1795-1805; Salem, Massachusetts (carving attributed to Samuel McIntire). Robert Adam, at the beginning of the classical revolution in taste, declared himself for “delicacy, gaiety, grace, and beauty” in all that concerned the background and furnishing of rooms. Although his influence on American taste was indirect, it was a force in the early Federal period. The maker of tJlis sofa retained the form common to the Chippendale era. But by straightening the lines a little to make them more gentle, by lightening the thickness of each element, and (in the Hepplewhite manner) by using a facing of mahogany to call attention to the upper line of the back and the front of the arms, he achieved unity as well as the delicacy, grace, and beauty which Adam sought. With crisp, precise motifs-basket of fruit, paterae, floral medallions, acanthus leaves, and streamers of grapes and their leaves-the carver attained surface movement and enlivened the lines of the whole.

Only one other known sofa of the Federal period is comparable to this one. Believed to have been made for Elias Hasket Derby of Salem and now in the Karolik Collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, it too is richly carved (Edwin J. Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection, 1941, PI. 120, pp. 182-183). On both, the long sweeping line of the back is edged in wood with carved ornament in the center-on the Karolik sofa a pair of cornucopias, on this one a free-standing basket of fruit with flowers spilling along the rail. Such baskets of fruit were not uncommon in eighteenth-century design, but the motif was used more frequently in the Salem area than elsewhere in the United States, and may well have been popularized there by Samuel McIntire. Although lacking tlle star-punched, or “Salem snowflake,” background, the omament relates closely in kind and execution to that on the great chest-on-chest made by William Lemon and carved by Samuel McIntire for Madame Elizabeth Derby West (Hipkiss, PI. 41, p. 75).

The legs at the front corners are tapered only on their inside edges, and the spade feet are ebony; these are calculated subtleties to indicate strength and stability.

Dimensions: height 39 inches, length 88, depth 29.5. Materials: mahogany; seat rails and four medial braces, birch; corner blocks, white pine; upholstery, pale blue satin with classical medallions, pearls, and drapery in white, French, Directoire style, c. 1800.