Have you ever wondered how the modern sofa got invented ? Where does its name come from ? The answer is quite surprising as this every-day item feels like it existed for such a long time. On Lesofa.club, we like to solve this wonderful question. Let’s look at who invented the couch.
We can find the earliest picture of the couch in 1686 on engraving entitled – Woman of Quality on a Canape.
In these days, couches were low-backed style that was called a canape from the French canapé.
Inventor, Mr. Couch ?
But so where does the name couch come from ? To answer that question, we could go through Reference.com. That was rather surprising ! The couch came from the English inventor, Jay Wellingdon Couch in 1895. Its new furniture was baptized after its name.
The sophas before the sofas
Now we need to see where the name – sofa – come from. We will see that this piece of furniture was invented earlier.
Originally spelled, sopha, as it was from Arabic origins was a furniture built for cushions. French people were calling them sofas or sophas. Its name evolved to be simplified under sofa.
Sofas evolved to be more comfy
It’s at the beginning of the 18th century, in the late 1690s and early 1700s, furniture craftsmen got more skillful at the sofas making. The craftsmen initiated the use of new tools and techniques to carve or sculpt the wood. Sofas became more robust and a market starting to adopt and this new trendy piece of furniture.
It is especially at the French court were sofa adoption increased the most. We could seed first ladies can be seen in painting then in the old photographs lounging around.
Rich people and noblewoman started having sofas in every room of their home or even several in one room while others complained that people were stretched out too often and didn’t have any in their homes. You can read in novels from this time interesting description of home or French court not looking like a court anymore