Design Moment: Mae West lips sofa, 1938

Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí's 1904-1989 drawing Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934-35) featured a luscious looking, red, lip-shaped sofa. In 1938 his British patron, the eccentric and very wealthy collector Edward James suggested the idea of making actual sofas based on the picture and five were made at the time including a pair made for James's country home, Monkton House designed by Edwin Lutyens.

Covered in red fabric with a black wool fringe, his Mae West sofa has recently been acquired by the V&A Museum in London who call it both "an iconic piece of 20th-century design and a joyous expression of Surrealism". James, who was also a poet, described the fringe as intended "to look like the embroidery upon the epaulettes of a picador or the breeches and hat of a toreador". Objects designed by Dalí have huge drawing power for museums – for its Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design in 2007 at the V&A, a pink satin version of the Mae West lips sofa was a star attraction. While the sofa looks deeply comfortable, Dalí said one of his inspirations for it was a group of particularly uncomfortable rocks near his home in Cadaques in Spain.