The Famous Great Bed of Ware

This piece of furniture has an epic name: the Great Bed of Ware. Carved around 1600 in Elizabethan England, the exquisitely crafted masterpiece became famous almost immediately – Shakespeare even had one of his characters in _Twelfth Night_ (1601) claim that a piece of paper was so large that it was “big enough for the Bed of Ware!”. The Great Bed of Ware measures 10x11feet and was able to accommodate four couples. And perhaps you may be thinking about how randy those rich Elizabethians must have been to have designed such a piece. Be that as it may, giant orgies were unlikely to have been the architectural message of the bed’s carpenter, Jonas Fosbrooke.

Instead, ideas about bedroom privacy differed wildly from our views today. In fact, until the Industrial Revolution, beds were much more public spaces – same-sex guests shared a bed with each other when travelling, whole families slept together regardless of age, and wealthy people (like royalty) regularly conducted their business affairs in their beds in front of colleagues and attendants.

While the Great Bed of Ware’s commissioners wanted to create an ostentatious display of wealth, they did so with a view of showcasing the bed’s function in the architectural language of their own times.