Unknown (English)
Great Bed of Ware
1590
Made around 1590 in Hertfordshire, the 'Great Bed of Ware' is an Elizabethan four-poster bed so large — roughly 3.3 × 3.3 metres — that it was said to accommodate four to six people at once. Commissioned as a tourist attraction by inns in the town of Ware, the bed is carved over every visible surface with dense Renaissance ornament and inlaid panels. Its fame spread across Europe; Shakespeare mentions it by name in 'Twelfth Night', and Ben Jonson and Jonson's contemporaries use it as a byword for extravagance. It has been on permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London since 1931.
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons