Recamier: Architecture in the Home

Swedish Recamier, $9,800

“I bought this in Denmark, but it’s Swedish,” said owner Jim Kilroy. “I’m pretty sure it’s from Stockholm, more specifically.”

Kilroy explained that this style of sofa is known as a Recamier, named after Juliette Récamier, a French society figure. The connection is merely that she was thought to particularly enjoy reclining on this type of sofa, as is depicted in a pair of famous portrait paintings.

Kilroy was very specific about the rarity of finding a Recamier done in elm wood and dates the sofa to the 1830s.

“This is what I might call a fancy, bourgeois piece,” Kilroy said. “It’s showy. You could lounge on it with pillows… it’d be in the music room or the drawing room. But it’s also a display piece – a merging of decorative and functional. This is from a time when the upper-middle class or merchant class was just starting up, and they were showing off a bit, but in a nice way.”

“It’s about having architecture in the home,” he added.