Perhaps the most famous chesterfield sofa is the one supposedly used by Sigmund Freud. Many experts believe that Freud used a chesterfield sofa to sit his patients down during hypnotherapy sessions. During the nineteenth century the chesterfield sofa became synonymous with psychiatry and hypnosis, and became a regular fixture in waiting rooms and treatment rooms of all kinds of doctors and therapists. There are also many different pieces of art, usually depicting nudes, sprawled across a chesterfield sofa, painted to fit in with the Freud reference.
In the book ‘A hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’, the main character Arthur Dent and his acquaintance Ford use a time travelling chesterfield sofa, that drops them off in various locations throughout the space – time continuum. This sofa appears in part of the books, and radio series, although not in all versions.