IN THE enthralling business of furnishing her home, almost every woman looks forward expectantly to the exact moment when she can afford to buy her sofa. For rarely can a living room start life successfully without this furniture piece of greatest comfort, which may be counted on to yield untold hours of cozy enjoyment before the blazing logs on the hearth, as well as to provide the proper and most logical nucleus around which to group the lesser pieces.
But how many of us are perfectly sure what kind of sofa it is that we should buy? How many of us know that, while comfort is an absolute essential, a comfortable sofa without real style is thrown away on any room that has hopes of being beautiful; and that a sofa which has durability and not distinction lives to make us regret it every day ? How many of us know how to choose a sofa that, no matter how much or how little is spent for it, may achieve beauty anywhere, and may be counted on for lovely suitability when used with any future furnishings we may acquire? Paying a large price for a sofa is no sure guaranty of future esthetic satisfaction. In a certain living room that just missed success, its owner finally laid the failure where it belonged—with the sofa that had cost more than any other single piece of furniture in the room; and when it was replaced by one of a different type the room immediately achieved the distinction it had lacked.
ON THE other hand, a sofa of very moderate price may sometimes attain absolute success from the decorative standpoint, and be worthy of carrying over into a finer “some-day” home if in the beginning it has been chosen for distinction. An eighty-five-dollar sofa, purchased for supposedly temporary use, proved more than a pleasant surprise to its owner when it looked so well with the expensive furnishings of a later home that it was given a fine new cover and allowed to stay among the costlier thoroughbred pieces where it belonged by right of its own high-bred lines. This sofa was six feet long, but it was very graceful. The arms were thin and somewhat flared, there was a slight curve on the headline at the back, the overstuffing was comfortable but not opulent, there was a proper moderation in the depth and ” sling ” of the seat, and the nicely shaped Queen Anne feet allowed the sofa to clear the floor sufficiently to minimize its size.
As aids to choosing the proper sofa there are certain things we should learn to know. Sofas of distinction are never bulky-looking. They may be large, in that they are of the regulation full length, but they have the happy faculty of not looking so; they may be small, in that they are designed to hold two seat cushions only, and so fit gracefully into the small-size room, but they never look diminutive, and can surprisingly seat three people when required. Distinctive sofas never show exaggeration—in overwidth of arm, in too much paddiness of back, in an unnecessary slouchiness of seat, in ornateness of wood carving or opulence of covering. They owe their charm instead to line and grace and a certain fineness of contour which may be found in pieces to fit any pocketbook, but which always look high-priced.
Sofas of distinction are never bulky-looking. They owe their charm to line and grace and a certain fineness of contour which may be found in pieces to fit any pocketbook.