Fashion’s wheel sometimes turns slowly in the decorative arts. Superbly carved by Samuel McIntire, this sofa retains the serpentine back and scrolled arms of the earlier Chippendale style, but appears lighter and more delicate. The sofa has undergone multiple alterations. When it entered the BMA collection, its legs had been cut down and fitted with inappropriate 20th-century brass casters, now replaced with carved spade feet. After stripping down the frame and finding it riddled with nail holes left by earlier upholsterers, curators and conservators used the evidence to arrive at a new upholstery treatment seen here. Knowing that well-to-do families up and down the Eastern seaboard regularly chose fabrics that had been available for several decades, the curator chose a documented stamped moreen wool fabric that replicates that replicates still-extant bed hangings made in 1770 in Salem, Massachusetts, McIntire’s home town.