A fully dressed bed was the costliest and most labor-intensive piece of upholstered furniture. It required the skills of a chairmaker to construct it, a turner to produce the posts, a carver to ornament them, and an upholsterer to construct the canvas support, mattress, bolster, and pillows. The hangings, consisting of a top, a back panel, curtains, and valances, incurred the principal expenditure and were supplied by the upholsterer or a seamstress, who often provided coordinated window treatments. This bedstead, extravagantly fashioned entirely of mahogany, may well have sported an elaborate set of hangings.

Technical notes: The head posts are square and taper upward. The rails show evidence of a tacked and laced canvas support, undoubtedly similar to that surviving on B.93.3. Both side rails were lengthened approximately four inches. The top three and one-half inches of all four posts are restored.

Related examples: Greenlaw 1974, pp. 18–19, no. 7.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.