The sofa depicted above is coming up during James D. Julia’s “Spectacular Maine Auction” on August 26th.  I’ll be profiling more of the delectable Victorian pieces in future posts as we near the sale, but let’s talk about the sofa above for the moment.

Priscilla Myer’s 1980 book, “Victorian Details” dedicates two pages to theories on the maker of the above sofa.  The sofa photo is unfortunately intentionally split at the spine of the center of the book and some details, like the crest, are missing.  However the rest of it is there and it is undoubtedly the same sofa design.

Myers examines two theories on the couch above - could it either be the logical progression for Belter to a more elaborate design later on, the “Birds” pattern, or could it be a transitional pattern for the Meeks’ to the Hawkins pattern?  Here are examples of each: the Birds, another Birds, and Hawkins.  Also, here is a table that Stevens Auction described as the Meeks Bird pattern, though I doubt they intended to draw a relationship to the aforementioned sofas.

James D. Julia is attributing it to Belter and Grand View also had one and attributed it strongly to Belter, so it looks like any mystery that existed in 1980 is no longer present.  I, for one, also have my money on Belter but some better provenance on one of these sofas would be nice to have so that we can lock it in.

Stay tuned for further discussion on the “Bird Pattern” furniture and how it seems that no one is sure even today who made that furniture.

In the meantime here are a few more items from the upcoming Julia sale.

Coming up for sale is another historically unified parlor set being split into separate lots. This time it is a “Stanton Hall” parlor set from J & JW Meeks. I won’t revisit the topic of splitting these historic sets apart again but you can revisit the prior post on the Belter set here. By the way, those three Belter lots collectively sold for $79,000 plus buyer’s premium.

This set is comprised of a sofa, one armchair and two sidechairs. The pattern is named after Stanton Hall in Natchez, Mississippi. The home was built for wealthy cotton commission broker, Frederick Stanton, who commissioned many decorative pieces for the house, including the original pattern set of this design.

This set is being sold from the Evelyn Church Royston Trust by John Moran Auctioneers, Inc. in Pasadena, CA.

There are some condition issues and evidence of old woodworm infection, which you can see is the topic of this conversation on the message board.

Bidding ends on November 20th and you can view the lots here:

Meeks Stanton Hall Armchair
Meeks Stanton Hall Sidechairs
Meeks Stanton Hall Sofa

Related items for sale - hover mouse for more information