Day 268 - Bed

 November 4, 2021

Gallery 731 displays Classical period objects dating from 1810 to 1830. Most of these are pieces of furniture, but the gallery is also home to an idealized but still recognizable bust of George Washington by Horatio Greenough,  as well as to imported French porcelains (including an ice cream cooler - all hail Dolly Madison!). The latter were highly prized, and led to the establishment of several American porcelain-making firms.  Despite the high quality of the domestic wares and the existence of protective tariffs, most of these American porcelain firms failed; apparently, the imported goods counted far more as status symbols.

I like a number of objects, including a beautiful - and simple - dressing table that resembles designs in a French design book of the period. But I chose today's object, a bedstead,  because I find it so altogether laughable, so out of step with modern tastes. Made in New York by a noted furniture-maker, Charles Lannuier, between 1805 and 1808, it too imitates a French design. The placard notes that, reflecting the influence of ancient Greece and Rome on the early American republic, the bed resembles a Roman daybed.  To me, however, the elaborately fringed hangings (reproductions, but also imitative of French designs of the period) make the bed look like something Egyptian out of the set of the movie "Anthony and Cleopatra" - which, come to think of it, was set at the end of the Roman Republic.  The bed's owner could boast familiarity with mythology: the eagle's-head of a griffin adorns the headboard, while the beast's lion paws constitute the bed's legs.  I can't imagine passing this bed without giggling or guffawing - much less sleeping in it.  But I'm sure it was much admired in its day, and it made it into the Met's collection. 

It's interesting to note that by the mid-1840s, furniture-makers were adding Rococo and Gothic elements, a reminder of how fleeting fashion is.