Bay Colony Antiques is proud to offer for sale this exceptional 20th century Chippendale antique style king size rice carved Mahogany bed. We couldn’t locate a maker's mark on this but it’s extremely high quality and undoubtedly cost a small fortune new. The bed can be completely taken apart breaking into 10 separate pieces (4 posts, 4 rails, 1 center rail, 1 headboard). The finials & the upper sections of the posts right after the reed carvings can also be removed. The bed has collared block feet and a lambs tongue carving above the rails aiding the eyes transition to the first series of carvings.
Rice was a staple of an early American diet and immense fortunes were made cultivating it, even more so than Tobacco or Cotton. It’s much more common to find rice carved beds with the sheafs of rice more spaced out so we wanted to point out this different stylized design. Traditionally these beds have Rice & Tobacco carvings but the carvings above the rice don’t really look like Tobacco leaves, in our opinion it looks more like Indigo. It very well may be just an artistic rendition of a Tobacco leaf but Indigo also played an extremely important role in the Carolinas in the 18th century. Behind rice, Indigo was the second most valuable plant cultivated in the Carolinas and the majority of it was exported to England for clothing dyes. The carvings are extremely crisp and well executed and really set this bed apart from your run of the mill plantation bed. The top carvings are definitely Tobacco leaves and each post has an urn finial with a spiral flame at the top. The bed has brass bolt covers and accepts a split king foundation. We may have installed the headboard in backwards for our photos. The headboard is finished on both sides and can be used interchangeably or not at all like they would do during the summer months on the hot plantations. The bed is in wonderful condition with our only notes being minor surface wear & some light sun fading on the footboard posts. The bed measures 82 1/4” wide x 88 1/2” deep x 85 1/4” tall.
We make it a point to pursue the highest quality beds and we purchased an identical bed to this about 6 months ago but never got a chance to photograph it. This bed is a king & the other is a Queen with a flat tester. Obviously most people won’t need a king bed and a queen bed but we wanted to make this note for designers and decorators who might be looking for a king for the master bedroom and a matching queen in the guest room.
