Canapé 1832 - 1877

This print of a Canapé, or sofa, was made by an anonymous artist, but it was published by Vve. Quetin, in Paris. The print comes from a publication called "Le Magasin de Meubles", or The Furniture Store. The name tells us a lot about the image’s context: this wasn’t high art, but instead a catalogue image intended to advertise and sell furniture to the middle classes. Consider the canapé itself. Its ornate design is a far cry from the austere functionality we expect in modern furniture. Instead, it borrows from aristocratic styles of previous centuries. This is bourgeois taste, which is not about innovation, but about aspiration, using commodity culture to simulate the trappings of high society. To fully understand this image, we could research how furniture businesses operated, trace the dissemination of design trends through printed catalogues, and study the consumption habits of the 19th-century middle class. This would show how something as simple as a sofa can illuminate broader historical forces.