Bed

About

For much of history the bed was the most valuable thing a household owned, and its hangings often cost more than its frame. Tutankhamun was buried with beds on animal legs. In Tudor England the carved oak Great Bed of Ware, made around 1590, was famous enough for Shakespeare to mention it, and in royal palaces the state bed stood behind a rail as a stage for court ritual.

Under Napoleon the Paris workshop of François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter made mahogany beds with gilt-bronze mounts, including the curving lit en bateau, or boat bed. Iron and brass bedsteads spread in the 19th century as cleaner alternatives to wood. Modern designers pared the bed down to a low platform, as in the solid walnut beds of George Nakashima, while contemporary designers such as Nada Debs add inlaid mother-of-pearl. Look at the headboard, where decoration gathers, and at how the rails come apart.