Great Bed of Ware
An Elizabethan four-poster over three metres wide, so famous that Shakespeare mentions it.
The bed stood in an inn at Ware and became a sight; guests carved their initials into it. Shakespeare mentions it in Twelfth Night. It is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Materials: Carved oak with marquetry, originally painted
Manufacture: A frame with carved posts, a headboard inlaid with marquetry and a tester, joined with tenons.
The bulbous carved ‘melons’ on the posts, typical of Elizabethan furniture.
The marquetry headboard with arcades in perspective, after German pattern books.