Can you help ANOTHER person identify a sofa, please?

I have an unusual piece of furniture, a sofa frame, inherited from my mother. I am hoping you can provide some direction since you deal with higher end antiques and surely have a wealth of knowledge.







My mother was a regular customer of Cary Long at his Baton Rouge shop, Goudeau's Antiques. He is now deceased, as is my mother, and I have very little information to go on. I know it is one of a unique pair, and that the other in the pair went to a plantation in the Baton Rouge areas. The sofa has remained, in the same unfinished condition in which she bought it, at our family farm.  I have tried to research this further and have some notes from conversations with Cary before his death, but it doesn't add up to much. I have no desire to have any work done on it as my mother was quite the collector; I have quite a bit that is more to my taste and fitting to our farm home.

I had Neal Auction look at the photos and this is what they had to say:
"The sofa you sent pictures of is indeed in the manner of the Jelliff firm, but the details differ a bit from the Jelliff attributed pieces I have seen. Perhaps by Shenkeisen, a New York competitor of Jelliff, or a Mid-Western furniture maker like Berkey and Gay? The plantaion house provenance is very interesting as is the piece."

I don't want to do something like place it on eBay at this time or send it off to Goodwill, where it could very well end up covered in fluorescent polyester and displayed under a velvet Elvis print. Not that there's anything wrong with that if one is so inclined BUT...I'd rather not see that happen.

Thank you in advance for any input you can provide.

Please attach some clear, bright, sizable pictures and we'll all happily take a look.

I would echo Neal's assessment of your furniture.  It resembles Jelliff but is most probably not and is by another Renaissance Revival maker at the time.  I checked what Schrenkeisen catalogs that I have and your sofa is not in there.  Not that it couldn't have been done by them in a year other than what I have (1872).  I looked through the Berkey & Gay catalog of 1880 and don't see it there either, but again it could have been done in another year than what I have.

It is a mid-quality sofa in a very pleasing form.  When I say mid-quality, it is Walnut and not Rosewood, and the carvings, though plentiful, are at a level of sophistication of mass production.  Neal's suggestion of Berkey & Gay suggests that they would agree with me on that.  B&G were mass-producers with a smaller percentage of their work being of the best quality of the time.

At some point someone should take the sofa and get it recovered and put back into circulation.  It is worth preserving and enjoying.  Thanks for sharing.