
Sofa
Duncan Phyfe
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
This sofa is part of a large suite of seating furniture in the Museum's collection that includes a pair of armchairs, ten side chairs, and two footstools once owned by Thomas Cornell Pearsall, a wealthy New York merchant and shipowner. Other chairs from the set are owned by the Museum of the City of New York. The attribution to Phyfe is based on the set's traditional history of ownership which is recorded in an inscription stamped on the inside of the seat rails on the sofa and several of the chairs. The skillful execution of the details also points to Phyfe. The curule-base design for the suite derives from Greco-Roman seating forms illustrated and described in the 1808 supplement to the London "Chairmakers' and Carvers' Book of Prices."
The American Wing
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.